Institutionalized
by Jedicellomaster
Summary: The year is 2312. The Minutemen watch over all settlements, and the Railroad pulls strings in their shadow. But when Owen Smith's farm is raided by Gunners, he realizes that he isn't who he thinks he is—and neither are the Gunners. Owen is thrown into the Railroad, and he discovers that he is in more danger than he knows—knowledge is hidden in his head that people would kill for.
1. Chapter 1

**Hello! Welcome to my second video game fic (the First was Elder Scrolls)! I sort of have an unhealthy obsession with Bethesda games. Anyway, I hope this story is enjoyable for all y'all. I wanted to do an untraditional fallout fic.**

 **Disclaimer: I do not own anything relating to the Fallout series—otherwise I could afford a new computer.**

 **Note: Not sure how often I'll be able to update since school just started for me, but I'll try my best! :)**

* * *

 _Breathe in, breathe out._

Owen focused on keeping his breathing calm, but it was easier said than done with all the adrenaline coursing through his veins. This was the first time a Radstag had gotten close enough without detecting him. He couldn't let it go to waste, or he'd go hungry tonight.

A little less than three yards away, the Radstag peacefully grazed on the grass. Unlike most irradiated creatures of the Commonwealth, this mutated deer had a fairly decent pelt—it only had one or two ugly, red bald spots. It would fetch a good price. Owen was already counting up its value in his head.

Owen peered into his makeshift scope and tried to keep his breathing steady so that his laser musket wouldn't bob up and down. The duct tape he'd used to hold the capacitor in place was starting to lose its adhesiveness. It didn't matter. He could fix it once he got back to the farm. All it needed to withstand was one more shot.

Slowly, so slowly that he wasn't even sure he was moving, Owen rotated the crank on his musket one, two, three times.

The Radstag tensed suddenly, its ears twitching. It had heard him!

Owen immediately pulled the trigger, and for once it didn't stick. _BOOM!_ Red energy burst forth from the end of the musket, taking the Radstag in the face. Or, well…one of them. With a high-pitched moan, the dual-headed deer collapsed to the ground.

Owen breathed out heavily. For a moment there, he almost hadn't had dinner.

He stood from the long grass and slung his laser musket across his back. Being careful not to trip on a tree root, he quickly moved to the dead Radstag's side. It was a clean shot, one that he was lucky to have made—right through one of the mutated deer's four eyes. The only evidence to show the kill was a black laser burn that smelled strongly of ozone around the eye socket.

Grunting, Owen grabbed the beast's front legs and began to drag it behind him on the slippery grass. It was a long hike back to Finch Farm.

Owen had shown up there about a year ago. It had been right after his father's death, and he'd been looking for somewhere to make some caps. He'd struck a deal with the inhabitants of the farm: he'd help out in the fields and they would give him twenty five caps a week.

However, he'd quickly discovered that the caps he earned weren't enough to keep his head above water. So he'd started hunting. He usually sold his spoils to passing caravans—and he had a stache of three hundred caps to show for it.

Not nearly enough.

When Owen finally reached the farm, he found that he was late—there were already two caravans waiting, their brahmin loaded down with wares. Luckily, neither of them were his usual buyer/supplier, so he ignored them for the time being.

Finch Farm was a big place, but the central hub was the old farmhouse—some two-hundred and thirty five years old. Most of the farmhands and the Finches lived inside, but Owen was stuck with a small hut around the back—just barely big enough for his bed and his footlocker.

He hurried towards it, ignoring the offers that several farmhands and the caravan traders made him for the Radstag he was dragging. There was only one caravan he'd do business with, and the owner gave him fairer prices than any of the other caravans could.

When he was a safe distance away from all the bustle of the makeshift market, he drew his hunting knife and quickly skinned the Radstag. He figured he could sell the pelt and some of the meat. Most of it, however, would make up his meal that night. Finch Farm may have grown food, but the Finches were clear: everyone pays for their own meals. Owen couldn't afford to go down to the largest settlement nearby, County Crossing, for food, so he usually made his own.

When he was finished with the Radstag, he washed his hands off with a bottle of water. He caught his reflection in the puddle it made and winced.

Owen was twenty-one, but everyone always told him he looked like a teenager. Maybe it was how messy his dark brown hair was—no matter how many times he cut it, it always grew back quickly and sticking nearly straight up. Maybe it was just his face—he had sharper cheekbones than all the other farmhands, so it could be misinterpreted as youth. Bright blue eyes stared back at him in the puddle. His skin had tanned nicely in the past few weeks. He didn't understand why he looked so young—did most teenagers carry a laser musket and sport a long, thin, red scar reaching from their forehead to their cheek, over their right eye? No.

Besides, he didn't _dress_ like a teenager. He sported a t-shirt (that used to be white but was now more of a grayish color) with a pair of blue jeans and hiking boots that he had scavenged from an old hunter's cabin. Over his shirt he wore a leather jacket so dark of a brown that it was almost black. It had belonged to his father, and was surprisingly sturdy for something so old. More than once, it had taken a blow from a wandering Feral or a Stingwing so that he didn't have to. He'd also taken the liberty of lining the inside with scavenged combat armor plates. It was frayed at the bottom, like it had used to be a trench coat, but Owen preferred it this way. Wraparound goggles hung around his neck, ready for action. He mainly used those to protect his eyes while crafting.

He forced himself to focus and packed the meat he was going to sell in a salt-packed little container, and the meat he was going to eat in a bigger one. He stored the bigger container under a plank in his shed and grabbed the hide and smaller container of meat. He also took the liberty of grabbing some of the junk he had scavenged in the past week. With all his sellable goods in hand, he exited his shed and headed for the main farmhouse.

It wasn't a moment too soon. There was a third caravan waiting beside the first two. The brahmin was a little older than the others and may have carried less items, but Owen knew from experience that the items it _did_ carry were life savers. But he was far more taken with the owner of the caravan.

Hazel Lewis was a woman of about twenty-three, with bright red hair, green eyes, and an athletic figure. Some would have called her average looking, but Owen thought she was fairly pretty. She was wearing no armor that he could see, just a dark purple leather jacket and black cargo pants—which seemed odd for an unguarded caravan owner, until Owen remembered that she was more than capable of taking care of himself. In her holster was a small pistol unlike anything he'd ever seen before. It was slimmer than a ten millimeter but packed a wicked punch. As he approached, she smirked at him.

Owen had secretly been taken with her for months.

Not that it mattered. Even if she had shown the slightest interest in him romantically, he never could have acted on it. For one, she only showed up at Finch Farm once a week. For another, Owen couldn't afford to be distracted by that kind of relationship—it interfered with his plans.

"What have you got for me today, Nerd?" Hazel asked, crossing her arms.

Owen rolled his eyes, trying to suppress the rapid heartbeat that she had induced in him. "How many times have I asked you to stop calling me that?"

She gave him a small smile. "I'll stop calling you that when you start speaking English."

She was referring to when they had first met, a month or so after Owen had arrived at Finch Farm. He'd sold her some old mods for his laser musket, and she'd asked him what they did. He'd launched into a lengthy spiel about what each mod did and how, and she'd called him a nerd. The name had stuck.

"I _speak_ English," he said defensively. "You just don't know how to listen."

Owen plopped his goods on the ground right in front of her. A couple of the farm hands were looking greedily at the pile, and he had no doubt that someone was raiding his shed right now, trying to find something valuable. It was a rookie move. Everyone knows that you never keep _anything_ of value where you live. The only thing they'd find was a bunch of worthless junk, and none of the other farmhands were smart enough to check under the floorboards for his dinner.

"Down to business, then?" Hazel asked, eyeing the small pile. "All right."

And so they both launched into "barter mode"—essentially, Owen handed her stuff, she gave a price, and he thought better about trying to persuade her to pay more. This time around was a bit more profitable than others. She offered 105 caps for the Radstag hide, 80 caps for the meat, and 200 caps for the pile of junk—only because he had scavenged a gold watch and she was feeling generous—for a grand total of 385 caps.

He would have been excited that he had doubled the caps he owned, but then he realized that he needed some supplies. After buying a couple of fusion cells, wonderglue, and a box of Abraxo Cleaner, he now only had 100 caps. Still, it was better than what he made most days.

"So what do you need all those caps for, anyway?" Hazel asked, leaning casually against her brahmin, which was lying on the ground. It was probably just sleeping, but the poor thing looked dead.

"I'm going to buy you a new pack-brahmin," Owen said, placing his caps in a small bag hooked to his belt.

"Aw, I don't need a new one," she replied, patting her brahmin on the neck. It didn't respond. "Bessie here has still got a lot of years on her. Seriously, though."

He sighed and straightened the strap that held his laser musket to his back. "My dad wanted me to move to Diamond City someday."

Hazel cocked an eyebrow at him. "Diamond City, huh? What are you planning to do there?"

Owen shrugged, a little uncomfortable. He hadn't really shared his plans with anyone before. "I dunno, start a business. Maybe run for mayor."

She grinned at the joke. "Ha. What would you sell?"

Why was she so interested? His palms began to sweat. "Weapons, probably. Maybe scrap."

Hazel's eyes lit up, like he knew they would. It was no secret that Hazel Lewis loved weapons.

"Energy or projectile?" she asked.

"Energy," Owen replied, crossing his arms.

"Bah," Hazel said, rolling her eyes. "Projectile weapons are far better."

He opened his mouth to reply with what would have been a (hopefully) withering retort, but before he could a loud bell rang. He turned back to the farmhouse to find Daniel Finch, the grumpy old man who ran the place, standing on the porch.

"Thank you for your time," he told all three caravans. "But Finch Farm is officially closed for the day to travelers."

Everyone groaned. Once upon a time, there hadn't been such a thing as "visiting hours" on the farm, but ever since the Minutemen had reduced the amount of guards on the farm (for reasons unknown to Owen), the visiting hours had been installed as a precaution.

"Well," Hazel said, cracking her neck, "looks like my time is up. See you next week, Nerd."

Owen tried to mask his disappointment. "Yeah. See you in a week."

After the caravans were gone, Owen went back to his shed. Sure enough, he found one of the younger farmhands—maybe seventeen, probably hired for a couple caps—searching the place. Owen sighed and kicked the kid out before checking to make sure that everything was still in place. Satisfied, he retrieved his food and sat down in front of the campfire near the farmhouse.

"Heya, Owen," another farmhand said.

It was Joshua—one of the only workers on the farm that found his presence bearable. There was a reason that Owen slept outside the farmhouse. Joshua was an older fellow, maybe in his mid-thirties. Despite that, his hair was still jet black, and his brown eyes showed a sort of boyish charm. Owen had heard some of the female workers swooning over Joshua.

"Hi, Josh," Owen said, setting his box of venison in front of him, between his legs. It made it harder for others to steal, that way. He'd made that mistake more than once.

"What did you do today?" Joshua asked, munching on a couple of Sugar Bombs.

"Scavenged," Owen replied, taking a long stick and shaving some of the bark off with his knife. Once that was done, he impaled a couple pieces of venison on the branch and held it over the small campfire. Overhead, the sky began turning dark. "What about you?"

Joshua grinned. _He_ was the one who looked like a teenager. "Scrounged up some caps."

Owen hid a sigh. "The answer is still no, Josh."

"Oh, come on, at least hear my offer!"

He rolled his eyes. "All right. What's your offer today?"

"900 caps, and I'll even throw in a couple boxes of rations that I found." Joshua seemed sure that his offer was compelling.

It wasn't. Owen didn't even hesitate. "I'm not selling you my laser musket."

"Oh, come on!"

They went through this every day. It had started from day one—Owen would sit down to cook his dinner, and Joshua would make him an offer for his gun.

It wasn't like Owen didn't have any other guns—he did, but he kept them where he stowed his caps. He just felt a personal attachment to his laser musket. It, too, had belonged to his father, who had called the rifle "Old Faithful" as a joke. The laser musket and the jacket were the only things Owen had left of his father. No matter what Joshua offered him, he wasn't selling those.

Owen withdrew his venison from the fire calmly as Joshua spluttered more insane offers at him—"a full suit of power armor!"—and, satisfied that the meat had been cooked fully, he blew on it to cool it down a bit before taking a bite. Chewy, but filling. It was better than what he usually ate.

Joshua sighed when he realized that Owen was no longer listening. "Fine, Owen. You win today. But some day you'll give in!"

 _Doubt it,_ Owen thought. "Sure, Josh. One day. But not today."

Joshua sighed again and left for the farmhouse.

An hour later, his belly full, Owen packed his satchel with the rest of the meat and the caps he had earned, and looked up at the overpass that shadowed the farm. It was dark outside, now. Most farm hands would be returning from County Crossing or preparing to bed down for the night.

Owen shouldered his bag and walked towards the overpass, until he was right underneath it. It took a little doing to find what he was looking for in the dark, but eventually his hand closed around the thick steel cable. He looked around him once before starting to climb.

It didn't really matter whether the other farmhands saw him or not; none of them were anywhere near physically fit enough to climb up to the overpass. Owen was only able to accomplish it because his father had made sure his son was in shape. His father's hope was that one day Owen would join the Minutemen just like his old man, but Owen never thought that was in the cards for him. Still, he tried to stay fit, if not for his father than for himself.

It took him longer than usual to reach the top, which was understandable, because he was tired. His arms aching, Owen crawled onto the top of the overpass and pulled a flashlight from his belt so that he could see. He didn't want to tumble off the edge accidentally.

His secret hiding spot didn't really look special. It was just a large wooden crate that spilled out from one of the wrecked trucks up top. Owen mopped sweat off his forehead with his jacket sleeve and opened it up.

Inside was a wide variety of things that made up everything he owned. There were a couple of fragmentation grenades (he had discovered them in an abandoned military base), a gray-knit cap (found on a skeleton), a laser pistol (also found in the military base), combat armor leg guards (from the occasional raider), patrolman sunglasses (also from raiders), and of course, his caps. Owen added his freshly made currency into the box and closed it up tight.

The next thing he did was sort of a daily ritual for him. He sat on his box of possessions and stared up at the moon, which was peeking out at him from the clouds. He reminded himself that he was looking at an _asteroid_ that had struck the earth and bounced off. And everyday, the earth would rotate so that each half of the world got sunlight and night in different measures. If nothing else, even if everyone _had_ died in the Great War, at least that would never change.

And then he thought about what it would be like to move to Diamond City, and to never have to worry about where food was coming from next, and to have a home bigger than an outhouse. Having a steady flow of caps. People that didn't treat him like a communicable disease.

 _Someday,_ Owen promised himself.

When he finally reached his shed that night, the last thing he thought before sleep took him was how strange it was that none of the Minutemen guards had come in for dinner.

* * *

 **Yeah, this first chapter is sort of slow. But the next chapter starts up pretty quickly. Just a note: this Is twenty-five years after the main quest in Fallout Four.**

 **Please shoot me a review!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Yay, two updates in one day! Like I said, this chapter is a lot more exciting than the last one. Please enjoy!**

* * *

Owen woke in the morning to the sound of a Bloatfly buzzing near his door.

He sighed and rolled out of bed, nearly crashing into the wall as he did. He grabbed his jacket from off the floor and shrugged it over his clothes from the previous day. Mumbling a drowsy curse, he grabbed his laser musket from his footlocker. He cranked it once, opened the door to his shed, and shot the Bloatfly dead on in less than three seconds. Luckily, the pest was far enough away that when it exploded, none of the guts got on his clothes.

Owen rubbed his face and grabbed a box of Dandy Apples and the wonderglue he'd bought before heading to the weapons workbench around the side of the farmhouse. All his tools were still there from the previous morning, but luckily Owen didn't need any complicated work done on his gun. The capacitor was still a little loose.

Owen munched on his breakfast as he worked, carefully applying the wonderglue to his laser musket. Maybe today he'd venture up near the old factory that had once been occupied by raiders. Everyone was too afraid of it to go near, which meant that there was good salvage to be had somewhere.

It happened quickly.

 _Ka-bang!_

Owen immediately straightened, putting his hand on his rifle. Had one of the guards accidentally fired their gun again?

 _Ka-bang! Ka-bang!_ Somebody screamed.

Owen was instantly in action, grabbing his laser musket and crouching down so he could peer around the corner of the farmhouse. More gunshots broke out, but he couldn't see anything from this angle. Staying low to the ground, Owen sprinted to his shed and crouched behind it.

 _BANG!_ In the distance, something exploded, but Owen still felt the ground vibrate. A grenade?

Multiple people were screaming now. The sound was deafening. Owen cranked his musket twice and looked around the corner of his shed.

What he saw froze him to the spot for a single moment only.

Gunners had invaded the farm.

They were all dressed in green military gear, sporting combat armor and bandanas. All of them carried energy weapons, but a few had frag grenades hanging from their belts. There had to have been at least twenty of them, pouring into the farm from the west. All were firing into the farmhouse, sending wood and brick flying everywhere. A couple farmhands were trying to fight back, but all they were equipped with was pipe pistols and rifles. They were no match for the coordinated attack of the mercenaries.

Horrified, Owen watched three farmhands get shot down by a single gunner. One of them was Joshua. His pipe pistol rolled from his limp hands.

Hate filled Owen's chest. This was a peaceful farm, yet the Gunners were killing everyone in sight just for their goods!

He growled a curse that would have earned a smack upside the head from his father. No way in _hell_ was he letting the Gunners take Finch Farm.

Owen cranked his laser musket once more for good measure and leaned around the side of his shed, lining up the Gunner that had killed Joshua in his sights. Owen aimed for the head, breathed out, and pulled the trigger. _BOOM!_ One Gunner down.

Owen cranked his rifle two times, then aimed for a Gunner who was pulling the pin off a grenade. _BOOM!_ The Gunner collapsed, and the grenade exploded in his dead hands, taking two others with him. Four Gunners.

The screaming had lowered in frequency. Was that a good or a bad thing? Was anyone else fighting back? He didn't have time to think about it, because the Gunners were not as stupid as he thought. A small group, maybe six of them, noticed the sniper taking out their men and fired back.

 _Ka-bang ka-bang ka-bang!_ Three shots slammed into the front of Owen's shed, setting the front on fire.

Owen cursed and pulled his head back to safety. These were not good odds. He had a less than 7 percent chance of surviving. How he knew that, he had no idea. It would have been greater had he taken some of his grenades back down with him from the overpass the previous night.

The overpass! If he could get up there, he might be able to wait them out, maybe pick a few of them off from safety.

But he'd have to leave cover to get to the steel cable. And even if he could make it there, and if he _could_ climb up faster than he ever had before, he'd still be exposed for an awfully long time.

Owen cranked his laser musket twice. He couldn't just do nothing. It wasn't a very good plan, but it was all that he had.

The screaming had stopped completely now. Was he the only one left, or were the others in hiding?

He took a breath and looked around the side of the shed. Six gunners were taking cover behind an old pickup truck, firing on his position relentlessly. Sweat trickled down his back as the heat from his burning shed reached him. Owen aimed for one of the gunners on the far side of the truck and pulled the trigger. Missed. Luckily, the truck they were hiding behind must have had some power still left in it. When his energy bolt struck it in the side, it penetrated the steel skin.

 _BANG!_ The car exploded with a blinding miniature nuclear mushroom.

Owen ducked behind cover and couldn't believe his luck. Ten Gunners down.

"What the hell is going on out there?" a deep voice demanded. It sounded strange, like it was being broadcast through some kind of speaker.

Owen peered out from around the corner. Striding towards the still flaming car, the rest of the Gunners behind him, was a man in power armor. It was black and held red stripes around the edge of each limb. The man—the commander of the Gunner squad, most likely—turned towards Owen for just a moment, and he could just barely make out the symbol of two wings with gears wedged between them before he ducked back into cover. Maybe they hadn't seen him yet?

But no. Owen heard the commander say, "Finish off the straggler, men. What we're looking for isn't here." Instantly, more laser bolts slammed into what was left of his shed. In a few moments, he wouldn't have any cover left. But with all the men concentrating on him, he wouldn't be able to climb up to the overpass.

Time to go out with a bang.

Owen cranked his laser musket as many times as he could without creating an explosion and rolled out from behind cover. He came up with the rifle to his shoulder, his eye to the scope. But the commander in power armor wasn't visible, so he switched to the first soldier that he saw and pulled the trigger.

 _BOOM!_ The Gunner was launched backwards with so much force that he knocked over the mercenary behind him.

 _Ka-bang!_ A laser bolt sped past Owen's head, burning his ear. He cranked his gun once and fired, but the Gunner it hit was wearing combat armor over his chest, so the shot did minimal damage.

Owen dived behind the farmhouse, but something still grazed his leg. Pain pulsed through him, but it was manageable. He swore and was in the middle of cranking his laser musket again when something whished past his ear.

Owen barely had time to register that it didn't sound like an energy blast before pain shot through him, originating from his shoulder. He fell to the ground, landing on his back, as his body spasmed.

 _Shock—baton—_ he thought, as the agony dulled.

The Gunner that had snuck up on him cursed at him as Owen struggled to his feet. A camo bandana covered their face underneath sunglasses. The shock baton the Gunner held crackled menacingly.

The Gunner swung again, but this time Owen was prepared. He stepped towards the Gunner while they were in mid-swing, caught their wrist, and slammed his elbow into the Gunner's face. His nose broke with a loud _crack!_ Owen kicked the Gunner in the stomach, and he keeled over. Owen broke his neck with a _snap!_

It happened within a span of maybe two seconds. When it was over, Owen felt a mixture of horror and confusion as he stared at his hands.

How had he known how to do that?

 _Ka-bang!_

Owen flew backwards, hitting the weapons workbench with a _thud!_ White-hot pain tore through him, originating from his stomach. Somebody had shot him?

The somebody in question stepped forward in their suit of power armor, carrying a large laser rifle.

"Well," he said in that deep voice, "if you want something done right, you should do it yourself."

Owen tried to lift his hand to give the man a lewd gesture, but he found that he was too weak. The edges of his vision were tinged black.

The commander lifted his gun. Owen glared at him.

 _Ka-bang!_

Darkness.

 **x x x**

The images came in bizarre flashes.

A memory of his father on his deathbed, holding out the jacket with weak hands.

The sun setting over Finch Farm.

Owen standing in front of the mirror, wearing scavver's clothes, the jacket in his pack and the laser musket on his back.

A person crouching over him, shouting "This one's still alive!" to others.

Another woman approaching, red hair in a tight ponytail, green eyes flashing in concern, saying "Get him back to HQ." Did he know that voice?

Being laid on a stretcher and hauled into a strange machine that didn't make any sense. Blue lights flashed overhead.

A television screen with the words PLEASE STAND BY written in large letters.

"What the hell is _he_ doing here?"

Brick ceiling. Musty odor.

Needle in his arm.

Nothing.

* * *

 **So I know this story has been published for a total of *checks watch* six hours, but I really would appreciate the reviews, guys and gals.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Hey guys. HOPEFULLY I will be a able to update through update throughout this weekend—that is, if anyone is reading this. ;)**

* * *

Hazel hated coffee.

More accurately, she hated the _taste_ of coffee. She didn't mind the caffeine buzz. It was pretty much the only thing that kept her functioning nowadays. But the way Jonathan made coffee was _horrendous_. Not only did he ruin the already sub-par taste, but he always made it too hot. Of course, he was the only one with access to the coffee maker, so she was stuck with it.

Hazel only thought about this as she sipped her coffee with a sour face so that she could put off reading the news article.

Someone had dropped it in front of her about twenty minutes ago. Five minutes later, Jonathan had passed out coffee. She chose to brood over the latter.

Eventually, she realized that she couldn't keep avoiding it. So she put down her mug and carefully picked up the newspaper.

 _MASSACRE AT FINCH FARM_

 _Piper Wright_

 _We've all heard about the recent Gunner attacks across the Commonwealth. Mostly, they've been raiding smaller settlements that have rejected the protection of the Minutemen. Three days ago, however, they broke the pattern._

 _Minutemen at County Crossing received a distress call from Finch Farm at 6 PM on Friday night. It had been in circulation for about ten hours. Alarmed, they rushed over. Finch Farm was a medium-sized settlement with Minutemen guards around the clock._

 _What they found when they arrived on the scene was distressing. The main farmhouse had been burned down, along with a smaller shed next door. The bodies of thirty-two men and women were found inside. Pipe pistols were found discarded on the ground, and .38 casings littered the grass. Minutemen guards were found dead at the perimeter._

 _There was no way to tell if the residents of Finch Farm were massacred at once or killed individually, but there were no survivors. No other bullet casings were found, and scorch marks were found nearby on the old highway. Twelve Gunner bodies were discovered outside the farmhouse._

 _While many Gunners may have been killed, it was clear it was no fair fight for the settlers of Finch Farm. There were no survivors._

Hazel winced. Most of what was in the article was accurate, except that the Minutemen hadn't received the distress call. The Railroad had.

Finch Farm had been a Railroad safehouse for years, under the guise of a group of settlers. In fact, half of the farmhands had been either synths or Railroad agents. The fact that the Railroad hadn't received the distress call for _ten hours_ did not bode well. Tinker Tom and his son Tool Tim (lame, but she didn't make up the codenames) had set up a complicated radio system that was state of the art and allowed for near instant communication. When the Gunners had attacked, they must have knocked it out. Hazel had only heard it when she switched on her radio because she was still relatively near the safehouse, under the guise of a caravan owner.

Which meant that the Gunners _knew_ that they were attacking a safehouse. They also knew how the Railroad communicated. The only ones who knew that were people _in_ the Railroad.

Not good.

There were some other inaccuracies in the paper that Piper had published. For one, Hazel had been the one to burn down the farmhouse to hide the evidence that the Railroad had been there. Oh, and there were _thirty-three_ people living at the farm, but only thirty-two bodies were found. There had been one survivor.

Luckily, Mom had agreed to leave that out of the paper she published for the Railroad's safety and the survivor's.

Hazel sighed and put the newspaper back on the desk. He was still unconscious. Until he was awake, nobody was allowed in to see him.

Not that she wanted to. Owen was an asset. And while she _might_ have formed a friendship with him for the sake of watching over the safehouse, that by no means meant that she valued that friendship. Doing that was against Railroad policy.

"Guardian," someone said.

Hazel looked up. _Guardian_ was her codename, given to her by her father. She wasn't a fan of most codenames, but she liked her own.

"Owen is awake." It was Jonathan, codename _Donor_. He was wearing a white lab coat and held a needle in his right hand, like he was expecting the need to use it. His bald head reflected light painfully into her eyes.

Hazel sighed as she stood. "Let's get this over with."

Railroad HQ had grown a lot over the years. When she had first joined as a teenager, it was only six rooms big (that was two rooms more than the original). Now it was twelve rooms. They'd done some digging over the years. The church property was big enough that they didn't run into anybody's basement, which would have compromised the facility. Jonathan led her to one of the older ones, since it wasn't covered in dirt and wouldn't "contaminate" patients in the medbay.

A couple people gave her weird looks as she passed them. She ignored them.

"No, I do _not_ want another shot!" a voice exclaimed loudly as they reached the door to the med-bay. "Get that thing away from me!"

 _Yup,_ Hazel thought. Owen was indeed awake.

Jonathan opened the door and entered the room first. Hazel followed when she was sure that nothing was going to get thrown. That happened a lot in the med-bay.

Owen was sitting up in a bed to the right of the room. He was shirtless, and white bandages covered his torso—a little over his stomach and a lot over his chest. He'd been shot by an energy gun in both places. Hazel still wasn't sure how he'd survived for ten hours like that. A Railroad agent was standing nearby holding a needle, and Owen was glaring at them, blue eye flashing menacingly. His brown hair was sticking up in all sorts of places. Maybe it was just the light, but the red scar on his face seemed to stick out even more on his face.

Silently, Hazel noticed that he was quite well muscled for a simple farmhand. What exactly had he been _doing_ on that farm?

"Please don't strain yourself," Jonathan said, sounding annoyed.

Owen's eyes flashed to the front of them room. They narrowed in confusion when they saw Jonathan and widened in shock when they saw her.

"You must be confused—" Jonathan started.

"Hazel?" Owen asked. She ignored the sharp look that Jonathan gave her. Technically, they weren't supposed to tell people their real names, but she was always terrible at coming up with fake aliases. "What's going on? Where am I? What happened?"

Hazel took the chance to take point on the conversation. Jonathan was terrible with people. "You don't remember? You were shot. By Gunners."

Ah, there it was. She could practically _see_ the memory of what happened flash across his eyes. Owen looked down at his bandages in confusion.

"How did I get here?" he asked. "Come to think of it, where is 'here?'"

Out of the corner of her eye, Hazel saw Jonathan shaking his head at her, but she didn't need his permission. They were the same rank.

"You're in the headquarters for the Railroad," Hazel said simply.

A blank stare for half a moment, then recognition flashed across his face. "The Railroad? The people who help synths? The ones who blew up the Institute?"

"The one and only," Jonathan said before Hazel could answer. God, she couldn't _stand_ him. "How did you hear about us?"

Owen shrugged. "Whispers, mostly. A lot of people think you died out years ago."

 _Good_ , Hazel thought. They almost _had_ died out, but then they'd pushed on. Besides, the more people thought they were gone, the better. It meant they could operate more freely.

"How am I alive?" Owen asked, wincing as he adjusted his seat in the bed.

Hazel differed to Jonathan for that question. She was not a doctor.

"We found you passed out at Finch Farm," Jonathan said. "We brought you here, and I performed emergency surgery."

Owen paled. "Surgery?"

Hazel raised an eyebrow. He'd been shot twice, and he feared _surgery_? Odd.

"Nothing too big," Jonathan replied. "All I had to do was bypass your—"

"It's not important," Hazel interrupted before Jonathan could launch into a medical tirade. "We need to know what you remember about the attack."

"Why?" Owen asked, scratching at one of his bandages. "If you found me there, then you know everything you need to." His tone spoke volumes. _I don't want to relive it_ was what he really meant.

Hazel gave Jonathan that said _get out so I can get the info._ Fortunately, the man understood.

"I have some business to attend to elsewhere," he said. He pointed at the other Railroad agent in the room that Hazel had forgotten the name of. "I require your assistance."

"Yes, sir." A moment later, the room was empty save for the two of them.

Hazel pulled up a stool to his bedside. "Can you at least tell me how many there were?"

His gaze kept flickering between her and the wall, and Hazel thought she could recognize the confusion lingering in his eyes. He was still surprised that she was a member of the Railroad. "I…I'm not sure. Twenty, maybe more? I didn't really get a good look before they…" Owen coughed.

Hazel sat back in her seat, mulling over the information. Twenty or more people were hard to command spontaneously. This attack was planned—days, maybe even weeks beforehand. To what end?

"Were they looking for something specific?" she asked, brow furrowed in confusion.

Owen stared at the wall, not at her. "I…don't know."

He didn't trust her. It was understandable. She'd spoken to him for months, trying to earn his friendship and see what kind of person he was.

"Owen…" Hazel started. He looked at her. "Look, I can't just go around telling everyone, 'Hey, I'm a Railroad agent.' It kind of ruins the point of the job. You were a rogue element released into our safehouse. I was dispatched to keep an eye on you."

Owen frowned. "If I was a 'rogue element,' why not just get rid of me or send me somewhere else? Why keep me there?"

An astute question. Luckily, Hazel already had a response prepared.

"It would have looked suspicious. Most settlements allow people in, unless they're hostile. It would have looked odd to kick you out, or make you…er, disappear."

Owen seemed to accept that as a plausible answer. "But why not just let me die?"

"Like I said, we need to know what happened during the attack."

"And when I do tell you? What happens to me then?"

Hazel was momentarily taken aback by the question—and that was a rare occurrence. He didn't think they were going to kill him, did they? Some of the agents were paranoid and would have preferred that, but the leader of the Railroad didn't like to operate that way, and neither did Hazel.

So she told the truth. "I'm not sure. That's up for Whisper to decide."

His brow furrowed. "What's a 'whisper?'"

She chuckled. "Not a _what,_ a _who_. Whisper is the leader of the Railroad."

"Oh," Owen said. "And…he's nice, right?"

"Very. Unless you're an enemy." Hazel realized a split second after she said it that it could be construed as a threat, so she added, "You'll be fine."

"Okay," he replied, relaxing a little. "Urm…I do remember one thing."

"About the attack? Go on."

Owen frowned, concentrating. "There was this man there. I think he was a commander or something. I overheard him say something about not finding what they were 'looking for.' Then he shot me a couple minutes later."

Hazel tried to keep a calm face, but inside she was reeling. What did the Gunners want with a Railroad safehouse? What could they possibly need synths for? Maybe this "commander" could give them a clue.

"Can you tell me anything else?" Hazel pressed. "This man, what did he look like?"

"He was wearing power armor." Owen scrunched up his face, as if trying to remember an important detail. "It had these weird wings and gears painted on it."

Hazel froze. "Wings and gears? You're sure?"

"Yeah." He cocked his head at her. "What is it?"

Hazel was only half listening. _Impossible,_ she thought. _Brotherhood of Steel protocol would never allow for a suit of power armor to fall into enemy hands._

That couldn't mean…

No. The survivors of the Brotherhood would never team up with the Gunners. They had too much pride for that.

 _It's been twenty-five years since Dad blew up the Prydwen,_ Hazel thought, trying to work everything out in her head. _Maybe the survivors got bitter with old age._

 _I need to tell Dad._

"Thanks," Hazel said, standing suddenly. "You've been a great help."

Owen frowned, confusion shining in his blue eyes. "Where are you going?"

"I have to inform my…superiors about what you just told me. Really important. I'll swing by later." She started for the door, but his voice stopped her.

"Hazel?" he asked. She turned. "Can you at least get me a shirt?" He gestured to his chest.

She sighed. "I'll see what I can do."

She left him with one thought in her head: _This isn't good._

 **x x x**

It was at least an hour before anyone else came in to see him. Luckily, Owen was able to walk just fine, so he walked around the room and found a book titled _Who Goes There?_ hidden underneath one of the other cots. It was less of a _book_ and more of an _instruction manual_ —how not to get caught when sneaking around and stuff. It actually provided useful information. It was also fortunate that they had left him his jeans, otherwise he would have been walking around in just his boxers.

He was still reeling in the fact that he was in the _Railroad_ —the people who destroyed the _Institute._

Everyone knew about the Institute, of course. Even if had been a quarter of a century since their destruction, most people that he knew still feared them. They whispered about "synths" that would snatch you up in the night and replace you. Owen hadn't really put much stock into those rumors—especially the ones about the Institute's secret weapons, called _Coursers_. Everyone had different opinions about them. Some said they were giant steel monsters that could shoot lasers out of their eyes. Others claimed that they look just like regular people but could kill you with a single glare. Even more claimed that they had tangled with one and somehow survived. Owen hadn't believed any of it.

But that was before he ended up in the Railroad's headquarters.

He still had a lot of questions. Why had they brought them to HQ if all they needed was information? Why not just stache him in some lesser safehouse until he recovered? How many of the people he knew at Finch Farm been synths?

 _Where_ were his things?

That last question gave him a flash of anxiety every time he thought about it. It was unlikely that the Railroad knew where his stache of prized possessions were. At least he could rest easy knowing they were right where he left them. But what about his gun, or his jacket? He didn't like the idea of the Railroad taking the last pieces of his father that he owned.

Once Owen had finished _Who Goes There?_ , he started to pace. He tried to leave the medbay once. Two rather large guards kept him locked in. He felt cooped up, like an animal. It wasn't like he was a threat, or anything! He was an unarmed, injured civilian. He was beginning to get the feeling that the Railroad was just a _touch_ paranoid.

Finally, after an hour that felt like ages, Hazel returned, looking slightly troubled. Under her arm, she carried a green button-up shirt.

When he saw her, his palms immediately began to sweat. He still wasn't sure how to feel about the fact that she was in the Railroad and had been spying on him, but his heart didn't seem to care. As it always did whenever she was near, it started to beat a thousand miles a minute.

"Here," Hazel said, tossing him the shirt. "Get dressed."

He caught the shirt with one hand and put his arms through the sleeves.

"Where's my jacket? And my laser musket?" he asked as he started to button up the shirt. He didn't mention the rest of his possessions.

"Those and the rest of your things are being kept safe, don't worry." She laughed at his surprised expression. "What? You think I only kept an eye on you once a week?"

Owen frowned. So much for keeping the rest of his things safe. "When can I get them back?"

Hazel pursed her lips. "Eventually. It's best if you stay unarmed for now. A lot of the other agents are paranoid enough as it is without a stranger in HQ."

His frown deepened. He was in way over his head here. "So when can I leave?"

She hesitated. "I…don't know. You need to follow me first."

"Why?" Owen asked, unable to mask the suspicion in his voice.

"Because," Hazel replied. "Whisper wants a word with you."

* * *

 **For those of you who are used to exciting chapters, I apologize. I swear, though, this will pick up. I'm gonna have some fun with this, and hopefully you guys will too.**

 **PLEASE don't make me beg for a review. I've already proven that it isn't beneath me. Give me some feedback, even if it's not great!**


	4. Chapter 4

**Yeah, so I'm worried that Owen's motivation doesn't make sense. Anyone wanna give m some feedback on that?**

* * *

Hazel led him out of his cage—called "infirmary"—and into what looked like the main room of the Railroad's headquarters.

It was at least twice the size of the infirmary and was surprisingly empty. Crumbling brick formed the walls and the room smelled musty. A desk against one wall housed a radio where a Railroad agent was fastidiously taking notes, somehow making sense of a series of beeping noises. Shelves lined with food separated the corners of the room into smaller sections. One hallway led to other rooms and, judging by the scorch marks and bullet holes in the walls, used to be a firing range. They passed another hallway relatively quickly, but Owen caught sight of a few mattresses lying on the floor as they walked. A few other Railroad agents ran back and forth, but other than that the base was relatively empty. Not exactly what he expected from the famous Institute slayers.

A couple of the Railroad agents looked oddly at Owen as he passed. One of them stopped mid-jog to stare at him before resuming whatever it was that he was doing. Owen supposed that they weren't used to outsiders in the heart of their organization.

After another moment of walking, Owen caught sight of the man who could only be Whisper. He was middle-aged, perhaps late forties or early fifties, and was standing in front of a large, circular, cement table. He had red hair combed neatly that was peppered with gray. He wore black eyeglasses and a thick brown overcoat that Owen could tell with one glance was armored. Whisper had a weathered face, but he wasn't ugly. Brown eyes read a piece of paper in his hand with astounding speed. A plasma rifle was holstered across his back.

Owen looked between Hazel and Whisper rapidly, blinking. They shared the same hair color and nose and were similar in height. Clearly, Hazel was Whisper's daughter. No wonder she was involved with the Railroad.

"Ah," Whisper said when he caught sight of Owen walking behind Hazel. "Our friend from Finch Farm. How are you feeling?"

Owen was surprised. He had expected a cold welcome, just like he had received from the other Railroad agents. But this man's voice was deep and warm, and it seemed very charismatic and kind.

"Um…all right, I suppose," Owen replied. "I can't even feel the wounds anymore."

"Good, good." Whisper straightened his glasses, and his coat came open a little as he did. Owen caught a glance of a few plasma grenades and a wicked looking .44 pistol. "I trust my agents have made you feel welcome?"

They hadn't, but Owen wasn't sure if saying that would make him sound ungrateful. After all, they had saved his life, even if they weren't the friendliest. "Yes."

"Excellent," Whisper replied. "Thank you, Hazel, for bringing him to me. Now, Owen, if you could sit down in here, I'd like you to tell me everything that happened on that farm."

Owen did as he was told. Whisper looked harmless enough, but he also moved in a way that said, _I know how to use these weapons, and I'm not afraid to._ He started from the beginning and told the whole story, leaving out only the miraculous way he had killed the Gunner with the shock baton.

Again, when he mentioned the strange insignia on the Commander's power armor, Hazel and her father shared a look. What was it about this symbol that troubled them so?

When he was finished, Whisper's brow was heavily furrowed, just like Hazel did when she was confused about something.

"The Brotherhood of Steel," he muttered unhappily. "This does not bode well for us." He looked up at his daughter. "I thought we destroyed them all."'

Hazel shook her head. "Most, but not all. When you blew up the Prydwen, a few survivors either made it out or were out on patrol when it happened. It's possible that a few could have joined up with the Gunners."

"Revenge?" Whisper asked. "That seems like something in their wheelhouse."

"Possibly. We should—"

"What's the Brotherhood of Steel?" Owen asked suddenly. He didn't like feeling left out of the loop.

Hazel looked annoyed at being interrupted, but Whisper only looked amused.

"The Brotherhood of Steel," he said in a patient tone, "was an organization that came to the Commonwealth twenty-five years ago. Unlike the Railroad, they were convinced that all synths were a disease that needed to be rooted out. They were bullies, taking any technology that they saw valuable, no matter who had it. They had a large, flying airship called the Prydwen. After they attacked us, we blew it up."

Owen sat silently for a moment. He'd heard rumors of massive tech ruins down by the Boston Airport, but he'd thought nothing of them. Imagine what he could have found if he had salvaged down there! He could be in Diamond City right now!

"So you think that this…Brotherhood of Steel could have teamed up with mercenaries to get revenge?" Owen asked. "How would they even know where your safehouses were?"

Hazel sighed. "That's the issue. If the Brotherhood really has hired the Gunners…we're in deep trouble."

"But what could they possibly want at Finch Farm?" Whisper asked, looking up at the brick ceiling.

 _Finch Farm_. Owen hadn't seen any other farmhands in the infirmary. That couldn't mean…

"The farm," Owen said. "What…what happened to the people on it?"

Whisper stared at him strangely for a moment, and then looked at Hazel.

She sighed. "Owen…" she said in a soft voice. "You…you were the only survivor."

There was an odd moment of numbness where he could only remember Joshua-Owen's only friend-lying dead on the ground. Then hatred exploded in his chest. Hatred for the Gunners, hatred for the Commander who'd shot him, and hatred for anyone who got between him and them.

Hazel and Whisper were both staring at him. Across the room, the bald doctor from earlier seemed to be listening in on the conversation.

"The Gunners," Owen said, not caring how menacing his voice sounded. "You're going after them?"

Hazel was observing him carefully, but for once in his life he didn't care whether or not she looked at him. Owen stayed focused on Whisper.

"Yes," Whisper said carefully. "We can't allow the Gunners to continue to threaten our operations."

"Let me help," Owen said immediately. "They killed my friend."

"Absolutely not!" the bald man from earlier interjected, marching across the room to come to a rest before Owen. "You are a-a rogue element! We can't just—"

"Shut up, Donor," Hazel said.

The man, Donor—what was with all the weird codenames?—shut his mouth, though he didn't look too happy about it.

"You might be helpful," Whisper said to Owen. "But what promise do I have that you won't betray us? We hardly know you."

"That's not true," somebody said, and it took Owen a moment to realize that the voice was Hazel's. "I've been watching him for months. If he were a threat to the Railroad, I would have eliminated him."

Owen wasn't sure he liked the way she said _eliminated_ , but he wasn't about to stop her from standing up for him.

"Make him a tourist," Hazel said. "He knows too much already. What more could he do?"

"Betray us to the Gunners!" Donor cried.

Owen opened his mouth to protest, but Hazel stomped on his foot.

"A tourist," Whisper repeated. He seemed to seriously be considering the idea. "Would you vouch for him?"

Hazel hesitated for a moment. Then she said, "Yes. I'll vouch for him."

"Well then!" Whisper said loudly, drowning out Donor's protests. He turned to Owen.

"Welcome to the Railroad."

* * *

 **All right, you guys asked for this:**

 **PLEASE REVIEW BECAUSE I NEED SOME FEEDBACK EVEN THOUGH I KNOW THERE ARE ONLY LIKE SIXTY VIEWS BUT I'M CONFUSED ON A FEW THINGS AND IT WOULD BE GREAT AND I WOULD APPRECIATE IT A LOT. THANKS.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Hey, so thanks for the reviews. Both of the two I received wanted the Sole Survivor to be head of the Minutemen with Piper as his wife. Actually, I couldn't decide between having the SS be head of the Minutemen or the Railroad, so I made him head of both—which is revealed in the sixth chapter. Also, the SS _is_ married to Piper, but again, that is revealed in a later chapter. **

**Enjoy this chapter!**

* * *

The first thing Hazel did, other than give him a quick tour, was give Owen his things back along with a warning.

"Remember," she said, handing him his jacket a little roughly, "if you screw up, it's my ass too."

Owen shrugged on his jacket. "Urm…okay."

Hazel handed him his musket. She seemed troubled by something.

They were standing in the Railroad's armory, under a watchful eye from several other Railroad agents to make sure that Owen didn't steal anything. His things had been placed in a big shelf, and he felt strange retrieving them. He'd never held all of them at once before.

"Why did you 'vouch' for me?" Owen asked her, slinging his laser musket across his back.

Hazel thought about that for a moment. She zipped up her purple leather jacket against the cold in the base. Owen would have done the same, but the zipper on his jacket had broken a long time ago.

"When my father first joined the Railroad," she started carefully, "Desdemona—the old leader, before she retired—didn't want to let him him. The situation probably would have ended in a firefight. But then Deacon—another agent—vouched for him, performed a scheme to make him a real agent and not just a tourist, and lied to make Dad seem greater. My dad ended up being the instrument that destroyed the Institute." Hazel looked at him. "Who knows? Maybe you'll help us as much as we help you."

Owen nodded. That was as good a reason as any. "Where did this Deacon go?"

An unrecognizable emotion flashed across her face for just a moment. "He…disappeared three years ago. Nobody knows where he went."

"Oh," Owen said, frowning. "I'm sorry."

"I…thank you." Hazel handed him his laser pistol.

He holstered it at his waist. "So…what does the Railroad actually do, since the Institute was destroyed?"

She furrowed her brow, thinking. "Well, from what I've been told, there were a lot more synths in the Institute than originally thought. The Railroad had to relocate a lot of them to the Capital Wasteland, but a lot also wanted to stay in the Commonwealth. Some of them didn't want their memories wiped either, so protecting them became priority. Plus there was the L & L Gang to deal with, compromised routes…Nowadays we make sure that the synths have a safe place to hang their hats."

 _Like Finch Farm,_ Owen thought. Before the Gunners, there had hardly ever been any serious raids on the farm. It was as close to safe as you could get in the Commonwealth.

Carefully, Owen grabbed his frag grenades and hooked them onto his belt. He also strapped on his combat armor leg guards and placed his goggles around his neck. Oddly, he couldn't find his sunglasses. He stuffed his gray beanie in the back pocket of his jeans.

That was it. Everything that he owned was with him now.

"What now?" he asked her.

"Well," Hazel replied, "I've already shown you the armory, barracks, escape tunnel and Tom's lab, though he wasn't in today. I think you're all caught up."

"Great," Owen said, trying to keep the eagerness from his voice. _When do we go after those Gunners?_ The image of the commander in power flashed through his mind, and caustic anger boiled in his chest.

"You!" a voice exclaimed. Owen turned to find Donor honing in on him, looking unhappy.

"Uh…yes?" Owen replied, confused. He hadn't done anything. Why was this man approaching him like he'd blow a hole in the wall?

"Jo—Donor?" Hazel asked, her brow furrowed. "What is it? Is something wrong?"

"No," Donor replied, though his tone and the way he looked at Owen made it seem like there was indeed something wrong and it was standing in front of him. "Now that your tourist has had a chance to tour the facility—" He said this with a strained voice that made it clear he thought it was a violation of security. "—it is time for him to prove himself."

 _Prove myself?_ Owen thought at the same time Hazel said, "Prove himself?"

Donor rolled his eyes as if being forced to explain something to a small child. "Yes, prove himself. It's standard of all new agents and tourists—or did you forget that?"

Hazel glared at him. "Of course not."

 _I wonder what that's about,_ Owen thought as Donor continued.

"One of our safehouses is experiencing difficulty transporting goods and synths along their usual route. We were going to send one of our agents, but since you're so eager for action I thought I'd send you." Donor grinned and Owen tried not to grimace. Donor dug something out of his pocket and handed it to Owen. It was a small holotape player with a tape already inside. "This is the dead drop that they left for us. I already had someone retrieve it." Donor laughed and turned to Hazel. "Have fun. Since you vouched for him, _you_ have to tag along as well."

Owen glared at Donor as he walked away. "I hate that guy."

"Get in line," Hazel muttered. She looked at the holotape player and sighed. "Let's hear what these old coots have to say. Only the really paranoid ones still use dead drops."

Owen pressed a button on the holotape player and strained his ear to listen to the thing play softly.

There was a brief moment of static, and then an airy voice was heard. "This is Montague Safehouse. We have too many packages here, repeat, too many packages. Some of the locals are starting to get suspicious." The voice took a breath. "Raiders are clogging our route, holed up at Listening Post Bravo. Requesting a heavy sent to clear them out before our packages are discovered."

Owen nodded as the message came to an end. He turned to Hazel. "I take it 'packages' means synths?"

She nodded. "Some safe houses are still clogged up. Like I said, a lot of synths didn't want to leave the Commonwealth."

Odd. If Owen were a synth, he probably would have wanted to get out of the Commonwealth as soon as humanly possible. Even a quarter of a century later, people still feared synths. He doubted he would have gone for the memory wipe, however.

 _One step closer to the Gunners,_ Owen told himself, but it wasn't like he needed motivation for this. Not only were Raiders bullies that he didn't mind putting down, but he felt a strange sympathy for the synths. He'd been an outcast his entire life. Being a synth in the Commonwealth…well, that was a million times worse. He could respect them, and was willing to help.

"Well, let's not keep those Raiders waiting, then," Owen said with a grim smile.

 **x x x**

When they arrived at Listening Post Bravo a few hours later, they discovered that they were in for quite the surprise.

When Hazel had described it to him as a "military base," Owen had expected something reasonably defensible with a few machine gun turrets and frag mines. Instead, what they found was a veritable fortress.

Listening Post Bravo was built into the side of a stone cliff, with one visible entrance that he could see. Raiders had built wooden towers around it along with a little fence. There were indeed turrets set up around the perimeter, but they were Mark IIIs—very tough guns. Various Raiders roamed outside the compound, taking hits of chems and waving large guns around. The facility itself looked relatively small, but as Owen looked through his scope, he thought he could see an elevator leading down.

They were laying down on a hill across from the bunker, trying to figure out a way to get rid of the Raiders without getting themselves killed.

"I wish we had a Fatman," Hazel said as Owen squinted into his scope. She was still wearing only her purple leather jacket and jeans, but she had also donned an old press cap and a leather chest piece—mostly just to hold all her ammo. In addition to her pistol—which she'd told him was called Deliverer—she also had an old rifle across her back that seemed to shoot—and he wasn't making this up—railroad spikes. It was terribly cliche, but of course he didn't tell her that. It kept giving off puffs of smoke. "We could wipe them all out relatively quickly."

"But the place would be so irradiated that we couldn't get in the bunker without growing second arms," Owen replied, rubbing his eyes. They were growing tired from squinting into the scope for so long. He adjusted the gray beanie on his head. It was chilly in the Commonwealth today. "What about scaling the cliff and dropping down on top of the bunker?"

Hazel shook her head. "Even if we didn't break our legs, there wouldn't be any cover on top of the bunker. They'd shoot us down in seconds."

Owen cursed and put his eye back to the scope.

"I wonder if we could just sneak right in there," she said. "We could get inside and take out their leader before they even knew what hit them."

An idea sparked in Owen's head as he followed two Raiders—a male and a female—with his scope. They seemed to be perimeter guards, but they were…preoccupied by other activities. Perfectly distracted.

He pointed to them. "How about some disguises?"

Hazel squinted to where he was pointing. Unlike him, she didn't have the advantage of a scope. When she saw them, she grinned. "Perfect."

Owen eyed the gun at her waist. "Just how quiet can this 'Deliverer' be?"

She turned the grin to him, and he felt heat spread down his neck. "Quiet enough."

Just a few minutes later, after narrowly avoiding detection by the two distracted guards, they had their disguises and and a pair of dead guards. Nobody guarding the bunker was any the wiser.

Owen was rather reluctant to leave his clothes behind, but it would look suspicious if he dressed up as a Raider and then draped his jacket over the disguise. Instead, he settled for balling up his clothes and hiding them in a nearby log. He pulled on a sweaty pair of long johns and leather armor. As he was reaching for the gas mask that the male Raider had been wearing, he noticed the gun he had been carrying.

It was a laser rifle.

"Hazel," he said carefully, "how did these Raiders get these good of weapons?"

"Here, let me see," her voice came, coming around the tree she had used for privacy.

Owen instantly strapped the gas mask to his face so that she couldn't see his dropped jaw or his reddening face. She was fully dressed, but her disguise was still showing a fair amount of skin. Her pants were so full of holes that they were practically shorts. Her stomach was showing underneath a leather chest piece, with a torn up tank-top covering the top of her chest, though not very well. She'd let her red hair down to cover her face a little more.

"Guh," Owen said. His brain seemed to short-circuit.

Hazel, oblivious to his reaction, kneeled over the laser rifle. "Hmm," she said, examining the weapon. "Maybe this one raided it from somewhere else?" She turned to the other dead raider. "Huh. This one had a nice gun too. That's odd."

" _Guh_ ," Owen repeated.

"I think that means it's safe to bring our weapons in, at least," Hazel continued. "The other Raiders wouldn't find it as suspicious." She reached down and snatched the bandana that the female Raider had been wearing. Luckily, they both had red hair, so it was unlikely that the other Raiders would look twice.

"We should head in," she said, looking back at him. "These Raiders will be missed soon."

Owen swallowed and pinched the palm of his hand. Finally, his tongue was able to work again. "Uh…yeah. Yeah, we should do that."

They hid the bodies of the Raiders under a bunch of foliage and began their approach to the gate.

Now, Owen realized that his brain wasn't functioning properly because of what Hazel was wearing. But even _he_ realized that they needed an excuse for coming back to the bunker so quickly when they were supposed to be guarding the perimeter.

"Urm…Hazel?" he said to his partner in an undertone. "We need an excuse."

"Already got one," Hazel replied. "Watch and learn, rookie."

They approached the gate, which the Raiders had closed. Hazel looked up at it and shouted in a very uncivilized tone, "Hey! Open up the gate, you—"

If Owen had ever said the words that came after that in front of his father, he would have gotten kicked out of the house. She really was selling the whole "Raider" thing really well.

A head appeared above the gate. It was a Raider wearing road leathers and wielding a large Chinese Officer Sword, which looked like it had been heavily modified to be serrated and, judging by the power pack at the hilt, electrified. His face was so heavily tattooed that Owen couldn't even tell where the man's nose was.

"Rick? Bianca? What the hell are you doing back here so soon? Your shifts aren't over yet, idiots."

Hazel made a big show of rolling her eyes. "We wouldn't have to come back if you weren't such a moron, moron!"

The Raider's eyes narrowed. "What did you just say to me?"

She sighed dramatically. "There's something wrong with the defenses."

"What?"

"Let us in and we'll show you!"

The Raider on top of the gate sighed and disappeared from view for a moment. A minute later, the wooden gates swung open.

Owen quickly observed what was behind the gates as the Raider approached. There had to be at least half a dozen Raiders outside the Bunker, and he could see another by the elevator. Eight Raiders total, not including the turrets.

 _Crap_ , Owen thought.

"What is it this time?" the Raider asked Hazel.

"Two of your guards are dead," she told him before taking Deliverer and shooting him in the heart. _Pfft!_ Seven Raiders to go.

Owen caught the guard as he collapsed and leaned him against the wall in a standing position. If any of the other Raiders noticed what had just happened, they didn't let on. Hazel closed the gate behind them. She drew her gun and stepped towards the other Raiders, but Owen stopped her.

"What?" she hissed at him.

He nodded to a small table where a terminal was set up underneath the turrets. "Keep them from getting near me."

Understanding dawned in her eyes. "Not bad, Nerd."

"Stop calling me that!"

They strode over to the terminal, trying to mimic the aggressive way the other Raiders moved. So far, so good. Owen leaned over the terminal and began to type.

"Hey, what's Rick doing to the turrets now?" one of the Raiders asked in a rude tone.

"The turrets are offline, dumbass," Hazel replied. "He's fixing them for you before the boss catches wind of it and ices us all."

One of the other Raiders looked up at the turrets, which were spinning in sentry mode. Owen typed faster.

"Are you blind?" a female Raider said. "They're working just fine. What are ya trying to pull?"

"Done?" Hazel muttered to Owen.

"Almost," he replied. "Give me a few more seconds."

According to Hazel, a "few more seconds" meant cursing every aspect of the Raiders who had questioned her, from their faces to their mothers and the Mirelurk that had spawned them.

"Got it," Owen said.

As soon as he hit the enter key, he dive to the ground, and Hazel did the same. Above them, the turrets spun on their stands and opened fire into the crowd of Raiders.

On a good day, Owen thought that the turrets wouldn't have stood a chance against the heavily armed Raiders. But he had caught them off guard. In a few moments, all of the surprised Raiders were lying on the ground, dead. Owen threw the computer on the ground and it shattered. The turrets powered down.

"That," Hazel said as she dusted herself off, "was pretty impressive, Nerd. Where'd you learn to do that?"

Owen was once again glad for the gas mask that obscured his face, which was reddening from the complement. "I, uh…my friend Joshua taught me." Sorrow stabbed at his heart, quickly followed by anger. It reminded him of what they were doing.

"Come on," Hazel said, sensing his change in mood. "We've got a Raider Boss to kill."

The ride down to the basement was actually fairly short. The first room they came to was in a wide L shape. It was full of wooden crates that looked freshly packed. A few Raiders in the room were busy packing other crates.

Owen let Hazel go first, since she was clearly the better Raider impersonator, and tried to get a glance at what they were putting into the boxes. He saw Sugar Bombs, Dandy Apples, and a gold watch go inside. What was it all for? Why wouldn't they keep those for themselves? Rations were valuable these days, and so was junk.

"What are you doing?" Hazel demanded in an authoritative voice.

The Raiders immediately stopped what they were doing to stare at her.

"Sorry!" one of them, wearing a sack hood, said. "We were just doing what Gasmonkey told us. If you want a cut, we can—"

 _Gasmonkey?_ Owen thought, trying very hard not to laugh. _He must be the boss._

Hazel waved a hand in dismissal. "What are you putting in there?"

The Raider stared at them oddly. "Don't you remember the deal with those Gunners?"

Owen instantly tensed. "What Gunners?" he barked, trying to sound like Hazel.

The Raider flinched. "Gasmonkey cut a deal with them! We give them food and a bunch of worthless junk, and they give us nice weapons!"

Hazel and Owen shared a look, and he could tell they were thinking the same thing. _This isn't good._

"Go back to what you were doing, you—" The next word she used was so strange that Owen wasn't even sure it was an insult, but the other Raiders seemed to buy it and did what she told them.

Hazel and Owen advanced to the next room, which technically wasn't even a "room" at all. It looked like something had busted down the wall of the bunker and into a cave complete with a stagnant pond, where several other Raiders were congregated. Including the ones by the elevator, that made…eleven. Those weren't very good odds.

Gasmonkey was clearly the Raider in the middle—the one holding the giant minigun. He was surprisingly short for a Raider, and his hair was incredibly greasy. He looked like a slimeball, and he sounded like one too.

"Bianca!" he exclaimed when he saw Hazel and Owen. "Rick! Where have you two been? You missed out on the good stuff!" He gestured to the empty bottle of Day Tripper on the ground.

Hazel and Owen shared a look, and he remembered what she had said. _We could get inside and take out their leader before they even knew what hit them._ Without Gasmonkey, the Raiders would be disoriented and the odds would be better for the two Railroad spies.

"Oh, you know what, Boss?" Owen said, stepping in front of Hazel to hide her from view as she pulled the Railroad Rifle from her back. "I think you've got a security issue."

Owen ducked, and immediately there was a loud _BANG!_ and something whistled over his head. He looked up just in time to see a railroad spike pin Gasmonkey's head to the wall.

Immediately there was chaos. Several Raiders just gaped at Gasmonkey's body as it fell to the floor, even more pulled guns on each other (probably assuming this was some kind of takeover), and even more pulled guns on Owen and Hazel.

They dived for cover, landing behind a box full of Sugar Bombs. _Ten Raiders to deal with,_ Owen thought. _Joy._

He pulled a fragmentation grenade from his belt and tossed over the box while Hazel reloaded her strange gun. _BOOM!_ Someone screamed. Nine Raiders left.

 _Ka-bang!_ A shot slammed into the box, dangerously close to Owen's head, but on his side of the box. Looks like the Raiders in the other room had caught up.

He cranked his musket once and fired at the hooded Raider that Hazel had intimidated. _BOOM!_ The Raider collapsed, and the one behind her looked apprehensively at Owen before he shot them with his laser pistol. _Ka-bang!_ Two Raiders down. Seven remaining, but they all had energy weapons.

"I don't like these odds!" Hazel shouted to Owen, lifting her Railroad Rifle to her shoulder and firing on a Raider with a _flaming sword_. The Raider collapsed before they could reach the barrier. Six Raiders.

"They're better now!" Owen exclaimed. "Fifty five to forty five!"

She glanced at him, no doubt wondering how he knew that. He was too. "Which one are we?"

Owen cranked his laser musket twice and took out a Raider preparing to throw a grenade. Five Raiders. "What do you think?"

Hazel raised her strange rifle, but it emitted a puff of smoke and what sounded like a train whistle before jamming up. "By the Wall, Tom!" She threw the rifle aside and drew her pistol. She peeked out from behind their box and fired at a Raider at the far end of the room, but it did minimal damage. She muttered a curse and ducked down again, working on unscrewing the silencer from her gun. "Need the range." She peeked up again and fired at the Raider. _Bangbangbang!_ Three shots to the chest and the man was down.

It didn't take them long to dispatch the rest of the Raiders after that. When it was done, the whole basement smelled like smoke and blood, but Owen was too busy inspecting one of the crates to notice.

"What's in there?" Hazel asked, joining him.

"Got it!" he said, pulling up the top of the crate.

He paused when he saw what was inside. Economy Wonderglue, military-grade circuit boards, bottles of crystal liquor decanter, a lot of microscopes and biometric scanners, Abraxo cleaner boxes, gold watches, desk fans, and fishing poles.

"It's just junk!" Hazel exclaimed. "What would the Gunners want with that?"

Owen practically didn't hear her. He was already adding up the ingredients in his head.

Oh.

Oh, that was not good.

"This isn't just _junk_ ," Owen said carefully. "This is everything you need to modify the standard laser rifles that most Gunners carry." He looked over at the bodies of the Gunners, many of which were carrying _old_ energy weapons. "The Gunners probably gave them their old weapons so that they could mod their new ones."

"Who would know how to make all that?" Hazel asked, looking alarmed.

"I…don't know," Owen replied. "Someone incredibly intelligent."

"Great!" Hazel deadpanned. "Whoever is leading the Gunners, they're a genius." She cursed. "This is really not good for us."

* * *

 **Once again, thanks for the reviews. I would also like some feedback on this chapter, so if any of you guys could help me out with that, that would be great. Thanks!**


	6. Chapter 6

**Sorry this chapter is a little short.**

* * *

When they finally got back to the Railroad HQ, it was just as empty as before.

Owen was ready for a nap. He hadn't had a wink of sleep for at least fourteen hours. At least he didn't look as exhausted as he felt.

Luckily, Owen's clothes were right where he left them, but he waited to change until Hazel was done so that his red face had a chance to return back to normal. She either didn't notice his odd behavior or didn't care. His jeans were a little muddy, but other than that they weren't too worse for wear. He felt a lot more comfortable in his clothes than the shoddy armor that the Raiders had used.

Hazel tracked down Donor in the large base, and Owen followed from behind, trying not to appear too haggard.

Donor sighed when he saw Hazel, but Owen couldn't help but feel a twinge of satisfaction at the man's surprise when he saw Owen.

"You're back!" Donor said, his eyebrows raised. Owen crossed his arms. "What happened? Is the issue handled?"

"Raiders eliminated," Owen replied. "But there's more."

Hazel and Owen filled in Donor on the information they had learned. When they finished, Donor's eyes were bulging out of his head.

"That's…alarming," he said. His eyes were darting around as if he was afraid a Gunner would pop out from out from anywhere. Donor sighed and rubbed his face. He turned to Owen. "I…suppose you did an all right job, from what Agent Guardian tells me."

Owen quirked an eyebrow. Hazel's codename was Guardian? Huh. It sort of suited her.

"Go to the infirmary and get some rest," Donor said. "I'm sure none of the other agents will be…comfortable sleeping around a rogue element like yourself."

Owen felt his blood pressure spike, but he took a deep breath to rein his temper in. It wouldn't do him any good to explode on a Railroad agent—especially this one.

"All right," Owen said, struggling to keep his voice even.

Hazel nodded at him as he passed her. He supposed that was her own way of saying good job. On his way to the infirmary, he sensed her following him.

As soon as Donor was out of sight, Hazel grabbed Owen's arm. His heart rate spiked, but Owen knew it was just because she was trying to get his attention.

"What?" he asked her, his voice angry, though not with her. The _nerve_ of this "Donor" guy…

"Come with me," she said, dragging him by the arm.

Heat flashed down his neck, but then he realized that the next room he dragged him into was full of people and well-lit. He realized that he recognized it as Tinker Tom's lab, one of the rooms Hazel had taken him to the day before. However, he hadn't had a chance to meet the ,an that the lab belonged to.

Tinker Tom was a middle-aged man with brown, crazy eyes. His skin was dark and he wore overalls with strange pieces of junk sticking out of pockets. Large, bulky goggles rested on his forehead, pushing his black hair back. Currently, he seemed to be working on a strange, boxy device with both a thermometer and a scope attached to it.

His lab was almost as strange as he was. Railroad spikes had made strange holes in the walls and remained lodged there. A couple beakers of what looked like battery acid sat on a nearby table filled with strange gadgets. An empty power armor station stood in the corner. In the other corner, a small boy nearly identical to Tinker Tom sat, fiddling with a radio.

"Tom," Hazel said, letting go of Owen. "I've got a new recruit for you to inspect."

Tom looked up, a goofy smile on his face. Owen immediately decided that he liked this man.

"A new recruit? Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy," Tom said, speaking quickly. He rushed to Owen and shook his hand. "You must be this 'Owen' Donor keeps telling me to stay away from. Lucky for you, I don't care what that old bat says."

Owen grinned, and he could already feel his anger dissipating. Suddenly he understood why Hazel had brought him here.

"Uh…thanks," Owen replied. "So what is it that you do here, Tom?"

Tom grinned again, and Owen wondered if this man had been hitting the chems a little hard. "Oh, I make all the fancy toys for you field agent types. Here, look at some of these." He turned to the boy in the corner, who Owen assumed was his son. "Tim! Bring over those armor plates you told me about!"

The boy—Tim—stood from tbe stool he was sitting on, a smile on his face rivaling that of his father's. "Sure thing, Dad!"

Owen smiled as he watched the boy gather a few pieces of equipment. Tom was grinning as he watched his son. When he glanced at Hazel, she too had a small smile on her face, but when she saw him looking she wiped it off.

"Here you are, mister," Tim said, setting the equipment on a table in front of Owen.

Owen looked at what the kid had brought him. It was a series of combat armor limb guards, but they seemed…odd. When he looked at any piece straight on, he could see it just fine, but as soon as he looked away it seemed to disappear. When he tried to look at all of them at once, the effect only worsened.

"I call it Chameleon Armor!" Tim exclaimed proudly. "When you put it on, it makes you nearly invisible! I took apart an old Stealth Boy and looked at the bio-matrices and interfaced—"

Owen didn't understand anything that came after that. How old was this boy, ten? He was already smarter than a twenty-one-year-old! The combat armor seemed quite good. He could already imagine himself sneaking through the Commonwealth. It certainly would make going after the Gunners a lot easier.

"That's…really impressive, kid," Owen said when Tim finished. "You did all that by yourself?"

"Yup!" Tim said, grinning so widely that Owen that he would crack his face open.

"You see?" Tom said. "I can give you all _kinds_ of cool gadgets. For a price, of course. Making this stuff ain't cheap, you know."

Drat. Owen didn't have any caps to spare. When all this was over with, he still needed money to buy a home in Diamond City. Maybe someday he could come back for those Chameleon Armor plates.

"Well, it was good to meet you, Tinker Tom," Owen said. "You too, Tim.

"Hey, you come back if you ever need some gear," Tom said as Hazel dragged Owen back out, looking pleased about something.

"Thank you for treating Tom and his son nicely," Hazel said. "A lot of people think they're both crazy. But I think they're great."

Owen shrugged. "I know a thing or two about people treating you oddly."

She raised an eyebrow. "I suppose you do."

They stopped at the door to the infirmary.

"Get some rest," Hazel told him. "I think you're going to need it. My dad's out on Minutemen business. I'll wake you when he gets back."

Now Owen raised an eyebrow at her. "Minutemen business? I didn't know Whisper was involved with them."

She rolled her eyes. "Of course he's involved with him, dummy. He's their General. He helps keep the Minutemen from interfering in our operations."

Owen gaped at her. Not only was her father the leader of the Railroad, but he was _Sam Lewis?_ Owen had known Hazel's last name, of course, but Lewis was a fairly common name.

Sam Lewis was a legend in the Commonwealth. He was former Vault-Dweller that had been frozen for _two-hundred and ten years_ , had re-founded the Minutemen, went into the Glowing Sea and came back out in one piece, supposedly killed whole legions of Institute Coursers and Deathclaws, _and_ he'd cleared out the Behemoth known as "Swan" from Boston Common. He'd done lots more, but Owen couldn't remember what else the Sole Survivor had done.

"Make sure you get some sleep," Hazel said, either ignoring his reaction or not noticing it. She shut the door to the infirmary behind him.

Hazel was definitely a lot more awesome than Owen had originally thought.

Despite the information swirling around in his head, the moment Owen's head touched the bed in the infirmary, he passed out.

 **x x x**

When Owen woke, the Railroad was a flurry of activity.

He wasn't sure what had happened while he was out, but when he tried to find his way out of the infirmary, he was nearly run over by a Railroad agent with a slip of paper. Luckily, Hazel found him before anyone else could get close.

"Follow me," she said, looking concerned.

Hazel had to push her way past some of the Railroad agents, and now that he'd fought with her he understood their respect for her. For him, it wasn't just that she was Whisper( _Sam Lewis!)_ 's daughter. Whatever concerns he had about trusting her had vanished. You can't experience a life-or-death situation with someone and _not_ come out trusting them.

"Donor!" Hazel said, finding the bald doctor in the crowd of Railroad agents. "What's going on?"

The bald man turned. He was sweating profusely and looked stressed out. He didn't answer right away.

"What's going on?" Hazel demanded a second time, gesturing to the Railroad agents running around behind them.

"Is it the Gunners?" Owen asked.

"We got calls from a bunch of synths simultaneously," Donor told them. "Two different safehouses." A Railroad agent handed him a card and he read it quickly. "Three different safehouses."

Hazel swore. Owen clenched his hands. If he ever got his hand on another Gunner…

"I passed on your information to Whisper," Donor said. "In the meantime, there's a call for you, Hazel."

"From who?" she asked. Her brow was furrowed again. It seemed to do that a lot, lately. Owen would have thought it was cute if the circumstances weren't so dire. Three safehouses attack at once? No wonder the Railroad was so busy. His hatred for the Gunners only increased.

"A synth who calls himself B8-67," Donor replied. "He says you may know him from the op at Mercer Safehouse."

Hazel's eyes widened. "What does he want?"

"He's holed up at Hubris Comics. He's offering valuable information in return for safety. Apparently, something is attacking his position. We're not sure if it's the Gunners or not, but it's unlikely. Most of them are focused on the three safehouses."

Hazel cursed and grabbed Owen's arm, dragging him towards the exit.

"Wha—where are we going?" he demanded.

" _I'm_ going to Hubris Comics," she replied. "And since you're my trainee, you're coming to."

So much for rest, Owen thought.

* * *

 **Hey, did I get Tom's character right? I'm afraid that I didn't. Also, sorry for those of you who don't really care for the Railroad, but they were necessary for the plot of this story. Please review!**


	7. Chapter 7

**Guys! My guys!**

 **You have no idea how EXCITED I was to see not only _114_ views in one day, but also _five_ reviews! Thanks for the feedback, guys, and thanks for reading!**

 **Just a heads up: a couple of you have asked for the SS's POV, so chapter ten will be from his POV. Again, Owen is rather important to the story, and I kinda grew an attachment to my characters, so please accept this as a compromise.**

* * *

Owen had never really been a fan of comic books. Joshua had been obsessed with them, but Owen just couldn't understand why.

He was silently dreading going to Hubris Comics for multiple reasons, and this was only one of them. For one, he wanted to be taking the fight to the Gunners, and he was not happy about being dragged along with Hazel while the rest of the Railroad was fighting them. For another, ever since Hazel had let slip that her father was _Sam Lewis_ , he found himself unable to speak to her. She was so, _so_ out of his league.

 _Focus,_ Owen told himself as they walked through the ruins of the city. He had only ever ventured there once for a valuable piece of salvage he needed to complete the modifications on his laser musket. Hazel, on the other hand, actually seemed _more_ comfortable in the city than in the Railroad HQ. Even if they were attacked by the occasional Feral Ghoul or stray dog, she continued to confidently lead them forward. Owen had already chewed through more of his fusion cell ammo than he was comfortable with. He thought about asking Hazel for more, but then remembered what she had said about ballistic weapons and thought better of it.

"So…" he said after the third hour of traveling. Hazel glanced at him once as they climbed up a hill made out of the ruins of a nearby building. "Why did you join the Railroad?"

Hazel tripped, but she righted herself fairly quickly. "What?"

Owen raised his eyebrows, surprised by her reaction. "Are you all right?"

"I…yeah." She brushed a stray strand of red hair out of her face. "No one's ever really asked me that before."

"Really?" Owen asked, confused. "Nobody asks each other why they joined the Railroad?"

"Well, they do," Hazel replied. "But nobody asks _me._ "

"Ah," Owen said, pretending to understand. She sighed as she reached the top of the hill and offered him a hand as he struggled up the last part of the incline. "Thanks."

"You're welcome," she said, shading her eyes as she looked down the street. The sun was starting to set and was right in their eyes. "Everyone assumes that I joined because my Dad is the famous Whisper. That's part of the reason I never joined the Minutemen. For one, they all seem too happy for my taste. For another, everyone assumed I would join up with them too."

"Okay," he replied, straightening his beanie as the wind blew on them. "So why did you join, then?"

Hazel seemed to appraise him critically for a moment, as if deciding whether or not to tell him. Finally, she sighed again.

"Let's just say," she said, "that I had a very close personal friend who was a synth."

Owen noticed the strain she put on the word _had_ and winced. He wasn't the only one out of the two of them who'd lost someone. "I'm sorry," he said.

She looked up at him, as if surprised that he had offered his condolences. "Thank you. Now let's get going. We're close now, which means whatever B8-67 is facing is nearby."

Hazel started down the hill and Owen followed her, a little more comfortable now that he knew something else about her. After a few minutes, they lowered themselves into crouches when they heard voices nearby.

"What are we here for again?" a voice whined.

"The synth, you idiot!" a different, deeper voice replied. "He knows something that the boss wants, remember? Do you ever listen during briefings?"

"Uh…not really."

"Moron."

Owen cocked his laser pistol—which was a little quieter than his laser musket—and peered around the corner. Hazel had to put a hand on his arm to keep him from firing.

Gunners. Of course.

There were a lot more of them than seemed necessary for taking a small location with only one synth in it. Maybe forty. All of them were armed with laser weaponry, but none of them were moving into the store. Why?

"What's their play?" Hazel whispered. "Why attack three safehouses and a random synth's location?"

"What does this synth know?" Owen muttered back.

Hazel tugged on his arm, and he reluctantly lowered his gun, though he kept it unholstered. Together, they snuck away.

"We need to find a way into the comic book store," Hazel said, once they were a safe distance away.

Owen tried to stay concentrated, but it was hard to focus when A, the Gunners were nearby, and B, Hazel was still touching his arm. Rather reluctantly, he holstered his pistol so that she had let go of him—no doubt she had forgotten with all the Gunners nearby. There, that was better.

Owen looked around for anything they could use. They couldn't use disguises again, because he couldn't stand the thought of being in the midst of them without firing on them and getting himself, and Hazel, killed. Looking at Hubris Comics through his scope, he saw several windows on the second floor, all of them with the blinds drawn. Looking closer, he thought he could see the top of something metal on the roof. Was it an air conditioner?

No. It looked more like the top of a ladder.

Owen looked around and spotted a fire escape leading up to the roof of a nearby building. Perfect.

"Come on," he told Hazel, striding towards the fire escape.

"What are you—oh. That's pretty clever, Nerd."

Owen grinned at her. "If you won't stop calling me that, I might as well live up to my name."

When he came to a halt under the fire escape, he realized a small problem. There was no ladder leading up. Luckily, he noticed a small rusted box nearby that could give him the extra boost he needed. He kicked it over and stepped up. Immediately he felt the old metal began to give.

Owen jumped up as the box collapsed and grabbed the edge of the fire escape with both hands. Grunting, he pulled himself up and onto the metal of the fire escape. He was a little worried that he'd lost some of his muscles, but after pulling himself up, the worry vanished.

He looked down at Hazel, who was a couple feet below him. "You coming or not?"

She frowned up at him. "Some of us aren't that tall."

Owen leaned over the edge of the fire escape and offered her a hand. "We don't have all day."

"Oh, shut up," Hazel said, extending her hand and jumping up.

Owen leaned down, caught it, and pulled upwards, but she weighed less than he expected. He fell backwards, and she landed on top of him.

For a solid moment, Owen was unable to move. His heart went into overdrive and heat flashed down his neck. They were pressed very closely together and her face was maybe an inch or so from his. She smelled like Nuka-Cola.

" _Guh_ ," he stammered.

"Um," Hazel said.

Another moment passed.

"Sorry," she said, rolling off of him.

Owen swallowed. His heart was beating on the inside of his ribcage with a sledgehammer. Other than that, he seemed fine. He just couldn't breathe.

After a third moment, his brain began to function again. _Gunners…the synth…focus, you idiot._

"R-right," Owen said, hauling himself to his feet. "Let's…uh, get moving."

"Of course." Hazel's face was slightly red, but other than that she didn't seem too affected by what had happened. Of course not. He felt a twinge of disappointment.

Owen started the climb up the building, trying to be quiet. If the Gunner's heard somebody clambering up a fire escape, they were sure to investigate.

Luckily, the climb helped him get focused, as exercise often did. When they reached the top of the building, he was almost entirely focused on the task at hand. Almost.

"Which building is it?" he asked, trying to keep his voice low.

"The sun is over there," Hazel muttered to herself. A moment later, she pointed to a building that looked indistinguishable from the rest. "That one."

Owen made sure that all his belongings were secure and wouldn't drop to the ground before setting off. This B8-67 was managing to hold off a bunch of Gunners, from what he had seen. How?

He jumped across one rooftop and crouched down instinctively when a slight _clang_ noise rang out. He'd accidentally kicked an empty tin can. Luckily, none of the Gunners below them seemed to notice. He kept moving.

"Here," Hazel said, jumping across a rather large gap and crouching down by what Owen had seen on the ground: a small ladder attached to a closed hatch, leading into the building.

"Locked," Owen said, leaping onto the building on tugging on the hatch. He muttered a curse. "Now what?"

"Leave that to me," Hazel said, pulling out a bobby pin and a screwdriver from the pocket of her jacket. In a few moments, the hatch was unlocked. Hazel put the bobby pin and the screwdriver back in her pocket.

"Impressive," Owen said. "Who taught you that?"

"My mother," Hazel replied, carefully opening the hatch. Inside the comic book store, all was dark. "I'll go first," she said. "B8-67 will recognize me. _Hopefully_ , he won't be hostile."

Owen tried to ignore the emphasis she placed on the word _hopefully_. He made sure his laser pistol was loaded as she climbed down. If he craned his neck, he could just barely see the Gunners on the ground level. It didn't look like they'd seen them. Yet. As soon as he had enough space on the ladder, he followed Hazel into Hubris Comics.

Almost immediately, a voice spoke from the darkness. "Who goes there?" There was a loud _click_ as a weapon cocked.

Owen's eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkness. He thought he could make out a shadow standing at the far end of the room.

"B8-67, it's me," Hazel said.

"Who?" the voice—the one Owen assumed belonged to B8-670—said.

Owen could practically hear Hazel roll her eyes. "Do you have a Geiger counter?"

"Oh," B8-67 said from the darkness. "Mine is in the shop."

A light flickered on. It was barely bright enough to illuminate the room, but Owen could see B8-67 just fine. He was a man who looked at least forty-seven, with curly blonde hair and brown eyes. In his hands, he held a large minigun. If that wasn't enough to make Owen swallow, he caught sight of a large Fatman sitting by a window. No wonder the Gunners were holding off. A blast or two of that, and their whole force would be decimated.

Owen observed B8-67 curiously. He knew now that some of the farmhands on Finch Farm had been synths, but he'd never met one that he _knew_ was a synth. Now that he had, well...he didn't understand what all the fuss was about. Surely synths weren't any more dangerous than a regular man? Although, this synth seemed a bit more dangerous than that.

B8-67 visibly relaxed when he saw them. "Oh, Hazel, it's you."

He laid his minigun on the floor and looked relieved. Owen wondered how they knew each other. Donor said it had something to do with "Mercer Safehouse." Oh, well.

"What's going on, B8?" Hazel asked. "What's with all the Gunners?"

"Please, call me Bryan," the synth said. He sagged against the wall, and Owen noticed just how haggard the synth looked. His hair was a mess, his clothes were tattered, and it looked like he hadn't slept in days. "The Gunners showed up a few hours ago. A couple of them made it into the store, but my traps took them out. They started firing into the windows, but I found this Fatman in storage and fired a mini nuke over their heads. They've been waiting out there ever since."

"What do they want?" Owen asked.

B8—Bryan looked over at Owen, as if realizing for the first time that he was there. His eyes narrowed. "Who's this?"

"His name is Owen," Hazel intervened. "He's a tourist…of sorts. I'm showing him the ropes."

What she said didn't work. Immediately, Bryan grabbed his minigun and pointed it at Owen. " _What are you doing here?_ " he demanded, eyes wild.

Owen raised his hands in the air, trying to avoid angering the synth any further.

"Please calm down," Owen said, trying to keep his voice even. "I don't want to hurt you, and I'm sure you don't want to hurt me."

"Yeah, that's just what a Gunner would say before they pull a gun on you," Bryan said. He hefted the minigun higher.

"If I were a Gunner, don't you think I would have shot you by now?" Owen said, a little more insistently. "If I wanted you dead I would have tried to kill you already."

That seemed to get through Bryan's head. "I…but…"

"Put the gun down, Bryan," Hazel said. Her voice out started hard but softened itself almost immediately.

Bryan lowered the minigun, looking slightly horrified at his actions. "I…he looked like…" He sighed and put the minigun back on the ground. "I'm sorry. I'm just trying to be careful with all these Gunners around!"

"It's all right," Owen assured him. "If I were in your position I would have been just as…careful." He figured that Bryan wouldn't react well to the word "paranoid." "If it will make you feel better, I can watch the windows while we talk."

"Yes…" Bryan said. "Yeah, that'd make me feel better."

Hazel shot Owen a grateful look as he moved to the windows.

"So why are the Gunners here?" Hazel asked Bryan. "Why are they after _you_ specifically?"

Owen peered through a crack in the blinds, found that he was staring at a brick wall, and moved to the next window.

"It's what I know," Bryan replied, sounding frantic. "They want to know what I do."

Owen crouched down by the next window and looked out, trying not to make it too obvious to the Gunners below that someone was watching them. All of them were still there, but they sure seemed to be moving around a lot. Like ants in an anthill. What were they doing?

"And what would that be?" Hazel asked.

Owen glanced at Bryan. He was sweating profusely. Owen looked back down at the Gunners. Most of them were gathered around the building that was as far as possible from Hubris Comics. Wouldn't they want to be closer to the building for an assault?

Bryan took a deep breath and started spewing information rapid-fire.

"You remember the Institute?" he said. "Of course you do, everyone does. Well, you guys blew up their facility, but the Institute was sneaky. They actually had _two_ facilities."

He opened his mouth to say more, but Hazel interrupted him.

"Slow down!" Hazel exclaimed, her face as white as a sheet. "You're telling me that the Institute had _another_ base? Where is it? How do you know about it?"

"I heard it from a friend. A…dead friend," Bryan said. "And I don't know where it is. But I do know that none of the surviving Institute members—yeah, you guys didn't find them all—they don't know where it is. They would _kill_ to get another chance at 'Mankind—Redefined' or whatever it is that they did."

" _That's_ why the Gunners are after you?" Owen exclaimed. "Do you…do you think that these Institute members hired them?"

"Maybe," Bryan said, but he didn't look too sure. "But this—this second facility. It's not as big as the first one, but it's just as advanced. Full _cryogenic_ _stasis_ for the Coursers and other synths they stored there."

Hazel looked very worried. "How many—how many Coursers?"

Bryan shook his head. "I don't know. At least half a dozen."

She cursed and started to pace the room.

Owen frowned, trying to process it all in a very short amount of time. "But…why? Why store these Coursers at another facility?"

Bryan shrugged. "Best guess? They're guarding something. What, I have no idea. But _everyone_ wants in. The Gunners, old Institute members, Brotherhood of Steel…whatever the Institute had there, it has to be big."

"You said you don't know where it is," Hazel said, looking almost hostile. " _Who does?_ "

Bryan swallowed. "I don't know, but someone does."

Owen realized he had been ignoring the window and peered out, keeping one ear open.

Below them, the Gunners seemed to be taking cover. There was one, however, that didn't seem to be trying to hide. He was wearing Brotherhood of Steel power armor and had a laser rifle at his side.

It was the Commander. The one from Finch Farm.

Owen tightened his grip with his laser musket. One good shot through the window was all he needed…

The Commander raised something to his shoulder. Primed it.

"The synth's designation is Q—"

 _A missile launcher!_

 _Crap._

"GET DOWN!" Owen shouted.

Everything slowed down. He could hear the missile that the Commander had launched take flight, and he could see Hazel and Bryan's confused expressions. Owen took two massive steps and tackled Hazel to the ground. An instant later, the missile hit the building.

 _BOOM!_

Heat washed over Owen's back as he shielded Hazel from the explosion. Somebody was shouting, and it might have been him, but he found that his hearing seemed to be malfunctioning. Owen closed his eyes as he felt the world rumble. Walls collapsed nearby. Something big and heavy slammed into his back. Pain sparked and he struggled to keep his muscles tensed so that he could protect Hazel.

Something smacked into his skull. Stars everywhere.

The last thing he remembered before unconsciousness took him was the scent of burning hair.

* * *

 **Hey, if you guys could give me some more feedback for this chapter just to make sure everything makes sense, that would be great. Thanks!**


	8. Chapter 8

**Yeah so um one of my worries is that this doesn't make cohesive sense. Is it all right?**

* * *

The first thing he felt was this strange feeling of warmth. Then, of course, the nausea and dizziness kicked in.

Owen coughed up what felt like a solid pound of soot before opening his eyes. Thinking was hard. Where was he? Had something happened on the farm?

Memories came rushing back and he groaned. Gunners. Missile launcher. B8-67.

Suddenly a face appeared over him. It was Hazel. She was frowning and seemed concerned about him, which replaced some of the nausea in his stomach with the warm feeling from before. Soot made a long, dark mark across her left cheek.

She also seemed to be saying something. Owen strained his ears, which seemed to be ringing a little.

"…not supposed to protect me, you idiot!" Okay, now she seemed mad at him. "You absolute _moron_!"

"When it comes to you," Owen muttered. "Always."

She froze.

Had he just said that out loud?

Owen groaned again and sat up. His head was _killing_ him. "Ugh…where are we?"

Hazel handed him something. It was a Nuka-Cola.

"Drink this," she said. "It'll help you feel better."

He popped the cap off and took a sip. Still tasted pretty decent, for something at least two and a third of a century old.

"You have a concussion," Hazel continued. "I already used a stimpak on the wound on your head, but it can't help with that. You've also got a nasty bruise on your back and a couple scrapes."

"Where are we?" Owen repeated, holding his head in one hand and the soda in the other. "Last thing I remember is the building collapsing."

Hazel crossed her arms. They were both sitting on the floor of what looked like a small apartment. Moonlight filtered into the room from the doorway, where broken boards sat. The place was a mess. They were sitting on the floor because all of the furniture looked like it had been chewed through by the dead mole rats in the corner of the room.

"We're in an abandoned building a couple streets away from Hubris Comics," Hazel told him. "I dragged you here after you were knocked out. Had to kick the door in and kill a few pests, but it was better than dealing with those Gunners."

His headache was fading slowly. "What about B8—uh, I mean Bryan? Where's he?"

She shook her head. "I couldn't find him in the wreckage. There's no way he could have survived."

Owen rubbed the back of his head, where the sore spot was. "I'm sorry. I know that you were friends."

Hazel sighed. "Not really. Deacon and I saved him from a gang of Raiders before Deacon disappeared. I try to keep in contact with all the synths I help, but he just didn't want to be contacted." She hesitated. "Thank you."

A memory suddenly slapped him in the face, and he immediately tried to stand. He fell back onto the ground when a bout of dizziness overwhelmed him.

"Don't strain yourself," Hazel told him, pushing him back into a sitting position. "You took quite the beating from that building." She noticed his expression and her brow furrowed. "What is it?"

"It was the Commander," Owen growled. "The one from the farm. _He_ blew up the store." He cursed.

"The one in power armor?" she asked, frowning. She got up and started to pace, obviously thinking hard. "Clearly the attacks on the three safe houses were just a distraction," she started. "So that they could go after B8-67. But why, if they already knew about this second facility?"

Owen tried to focus on what she was saying so that the acid of his anger wouldn't eat him alive. "Well, Bryan was about to tell us what synth knew where the second facility was, wasn't he? The Gunners must not have known that. How did they find out what he knew?"

Hazel suddenly froze. "Donor told me that there had been a call for me. It could have been common knowledge in the Railroad for who knows how long."

"So?" Owen asked.

She turned to look at him, looking tremendously worried. "The Gunners found out where _four_ of our safe houses were. How?"

"Maybe they found a couple dead drops?" he suggested, not liking where she was going with this.

She shook her head. "No. Dead drops are hard to find even for people who know the location they're in." Hazel visibly swallowed. "No, the Railroad has a mole. Somebody is telling them exactly where to find our safehouses. And Bryan."

Owen muttered another curse. "We need to get back to HQ."

"Agreed." She hesitated for a moment. "But there are still Gunners in the area. Searching for bodies. I think that they assumed we were thrown from the wreckage." She looked at him. "How do you wanna play this?"

He frowned at her. "Why are you asking me?"

Hazel crossed her legs on the floor so that she was sitting right across from him. "These Gunners keep throwing us for a loop, but they pissed you off first. The way I see it, you deserve a chance to kick their asses first."

Owen's frown deepened. Why was she offering him this chance at revenge? Why not just help sneak him out of there so that they could regroup at the Railroad's HQ?

But when he looked in her eyes—trying not to think about how nice the green looked—he saw something else. It was a dark look. Not exactly hatred, at least, not for the Gunners, but something that understood his compulsion for revenge. What exactly had happened to her?

Owen thought about their options. On the one hand, they could hunt down all the Gunners in the area and then get to HQ, and he would be lying if he said that a large part of him wasn't itching to do just that. But the issue was if they attempted to do that, they could very well be killed trying. Owen was fine with his death, as long as he took the Commander with him. But he couldn't allow Hazel to suffer the same fate.

"We take out only as many as it takes for us to get away," Owen said slowly. "We have to tell your father about what we learned." He didn't tell her about his main motivation for refraining from revenge. It wouldn't have mattered.

Hazel was doing that thing where she watched him carefully again. She seemed to be analyzing him. Finally, she nodded. Had he passed some kind of test?

"All right," she said. "We try to run for it, then. Can you stand?"

"I think so."

Owen attempted to struggle to his feet, but he stumbled a little bit. His body ached. After a moment, Hazel caught him, placing one hand on his chest and the other on his ribs. She still smelled like Nuka-Cola, even after the explosion. After a moment, she let go of him.

"Urm…" Owen said, swallowing. "Thanks."

"No problem," she replied.

She cocked Deliverer and made sure that her Railroad Rifle was on her back. Owen did the same with his weapons. She let him go first, and he took a hesitant step, found minimal dizziness, and stepped outside their hiding place.

The cold of the Commonwealth hit him almost immediately. That, and the sound of someone walking nearby.

More out of instinct than anything, Owen crouched down, sticking to the shadows, making sure that his laser pistol was loaded. A moment later, Hazel joined him. Another moment after that, the Gunners came around the corner.

There were five of them, all of them armed with laser rifles. Owen noticed that all of the rifles had modifications that were not standard. A few of them had sniper barrels, which increased damage and range. He didn't want to be shot with one of those. They marched around the corner, their faces all covered by bandanas. They caught sight of the busted-in door on the old apartment and approached carefully, weapons drawn.

Owen and Hazel struck quickly. Before the Gunners could catch sight of them, they both took their pistols and took out four of the enemies before they realized what happened. The fifth and final Gunner opened his mouth to yell for help, but Owen and Hazel both fired on him at the same time. It was unclear which shot took him out.

"That was close," Owen muttered.

"Yeah," Hazel agreed, reloading her gun. "Come on, we've got a ways to go."

Together, they snuck off into the darkness.

 **x x x**

They didn't encounter any more Gunners on their way back to HQ, although they came close more than once. Owen's trigger finger itched to put energy blasts in all of them, but he restrained himself with great difficulty.

When they reached the back entrance to the church, they had to sneak past a few Raiders. Once they got inside, things seemed to have calmed down a bit. There weren't nearly as many people milling about, but the occasional runner here and then still nearly ran them over.

"Where's Whisper?" Hazel asked a Railroad agent running past. The agent pointed at the infirmary.

Hazel and Owen shared a concerned look, though Hazel's face had drained of all color and looked tremendously worried.

When they entered the infirmary, they both gave a sigh of relief at nearly the same time. Whisper—should Owen refer to him by his codename?—was fine, but he was sitting at someone's bedside. All the other beds in the room were filled.

Owen was surprised to find that Donor was lying in the bed, a bandage around his head. He felt neither satisfaction nor worry. Just confusion. Donor hadn't struck him as the type of Railroad agent to go out and fight in the field.

"Dad!" Hazel said, walking up to the bedside. "What happened?"

"The Gunners," her father replied, anger burning in his brown eyes. "We had to send out everyone we had to defend the safehouses. Mercer and Dayton safehouse are fine, but we have yet to hear back from Montague. Donor here was injured in the battle for Mercer safehouse."

"I'm fine," Donor insisted. "I can still—"

"Sit down," Whisper said firmly. He turned to Hazel and Owen. "How did the op for B8-67 go?"

Owen and Hazel shared another look.

"Not well," Hazel said.

When they finished with the story of what Bryan had told them and the attack by the Gunners, Whisper muttered a string of curses that made Owen's ears go red.

"A second facility," he said, shaking his head. "It's the Institute all over again."

Donor attempted to stand, but Whisper pushed him back down again.

"We need to investigate this immediately," Donor said.

"Agreed," Whisper said. He turned to Owen. "Do you remember anything else that could help us? Anything at all? We _can't_ allow the Gunners to get their hands on the technology there."

Owen thought for a moment, then shook his head. "Sorry, uh…sir. I can't remember anything else." Why ask him and not Hazel?

Whisper sighed. "It's all right, kid. Get some rest."

Owen bristled slightly at being referred to as "kid," but he did as he was told. His head was still aching, and he was still injured from the farm, though he almost didn't feel those anymore. He'd forgotten to change his bandages, too.

"Does something feel off to you?" Hazel asked Owen as they left the infirmary.

"Like what?" Owen replied.

She frowned. "I don't know. I just can't help but think we got away from those Gunners too easily."

He thought about that for a moment. "Why would they blow us up and then let us escape? It makes no sense."

She did that strange thing were her eyes went distant, and he could tell that she was thinking hard about it. "Why…"

Owen tried to remember anything odd about their escape for her sake. They'd taken out the Gunners and snuck past the rest. Although, there had been a moment or two when he thought for sure that they'd been seen. Odd? Yes. Suspicious? Maybe. Why would Owen and Hazel be allowed to escape?

Hazel suddenly gripped Owen's arm so tight that he thought for sure it was going to lose circulation and fall to the ground right then.

"Owen," she breathed. "What if they let us go so that they could _follow us back here?_ "

Two ideas flashed through Owen's head. Either the idea was redundant because there was a mole who would have told them that, or there was never a mole in the first place.

 _BOOM!_

Dust rained from the brick ceiling as the entire basement shook. Hazel and Owen staggered into a wall. Several other agents fell to the ground. Somebody screamed.

Whisper ran out of the infirmary, skidding as he came to a stop.

"How did they find us?" he asked of no one in particular.

He turned to the frozen Railroad agents.

"Prepare the defenses!" he bellowed. Then:

"The Railroad is under attack."

* * *

 **Yes, yes, I know the Railroad has been attacked before. Once again, it is important to the overall plot. Remember: in two chapters, you get the SS's POV!**

 **Thanks for the reviews, guys. I really do appreciate them.**


	9. Chapter 9

**This is it, my guys! The bombshell chapter! Please enjoy.**

* * *

Owen was nearly trampled before the assault even began.

All of the Railroad agents scrambled for weapons and defensive positions, and it was only being pressed against the wall that saved him from the stampede. Shouting filled the room, and people rushed for both the escape tunnel and the catacombs.

"Come on!" Hazel told Owen, when there was enough of a path through the crowd. She grabbed his arm and towed him behind her to the armory, where several other agents were already stocking up on supplies.

"Take these," she said to him, tossing him a couple plasma grenades. She grabbed some extra ammo for her guns and strapped a wicked-looking combat knife to her thigh.

Owen hooked the grenades to his belt. "What's the plan?"

She looked over at him, unscrewing the silencer on Deliverer.

"Don't die," she said. "And make sure that the Gunners do."

Somebody ran into the armory. It was Donor, his arm still bandaged up. He also had another one peeking out of a hole in his pants leg.

"You two!" he said, pointing at Owen and Hazel. "Get to the catacombs! They're overrunning our defenses!"

Owen pulled his laser musket off his back and cranked it four times. Hazel nodded at him, and together they ran for the catacombs.

When they reached the tunnels, they already smelled like gunpowder, ozone, and blood. Several bodies were on the floor of the largest room, and Owen was dismayed to find that most of them were Railroad agents.

Two Gunners were already waiting for them.

 _Bang BOOM!_

Hazel and Owen fired their guns at the same time. The Gunner on the right was thrown backwards into the brick wall by the blast from Owen's laser musket, and the Gunner on the left collapsed with a railroad spike in his heart.

"You know," Owen said. "We make a pretty good team."

Hazel gave him a small smile. "Maybe we do."

Footsteps sounded down the tunnels. Owen and Hazel immediately took cover behind the left and right walls leading into the catacombs. Gunners rushed past them and into the room behind. There were five of them. As soon as they were a respectable distance away, inspecting the bodies of their fallen comrades, Owen pulled the pin off one of his plasma grenades and rolled it across the room. It came to a stop in the middle of the group of Gunners.

 _BOOM!_ Green light exploded in the room. The Gunners were thrown across the room, slamming into walls with fewer body parts than they came in with.

Owen blinked, momentarily blinded by the blast. He turned to Hazel.

"I like these things."

Hazel grinned at him. "They are pretty nice, aren't they?"

"I thought you didn't like energy weapons?" he asked her.

She shrugged. "Grenades don't count."

"What are you talking about? They totally count."

 _Bang!_ Hazel shot a Gunner that came around the corner. His arm got pinned to the wall by a spike, but he was already dead.

"But you don't _shoot_ or _aim_ with them," she replied as they moved into the catacombs. "That's what matters."

 _Ka-bang!_ A Gunner wearing thick plates of combat armor led a squad of two others towards them. Owen took cover in a niche in the wall. He cranked his laser musket five times and leaned out, aiming for the Gunner's head. _BOOM!_ The other Gunners scattered as their leader was launched into the wall, dead.

Owen rolled his eyes at her. "What is your problem with energy guns, again?"

Hazel unholstered Deliverer and shot one of the Gunners aiming for them in the neck. He dropped. The other Gunner made a mad run for them, but both Hazel's pistol and Owen's laser pistol took him out at the same time—one shot to the chest, another to the stomach.

Owen and Hazel took a few more steps down the brick hallway only to be stopped as more Gunners arrived. How many of these guys were there?

He unhooked another plasma grenade from his belt and threw it down the corridor. _BOOM!_ A green light show annihilated the small group of Gunners.

"Energy weapons are too complicated," Hazel told him as they jogged down the tunnel. "Ballistic weapons are simpler, _and_ they're spontaneous."

Owen raised an eyebrow at her. "Yeah, sure, if by _spontaneous_ you mean _jams all the time_."

They turned and immediately found more Gunners waiting for them. Owen ducked behind the corner and cranked his laser musket while Hazel fired into the small crowd of Gunners with her Railroad Rifle, crouching behind cover. Red energy bolts whizzed over their heads.

"See?" she told him as he leaned around the corner to fire. "Too complicated!"

"But—" Owen said, firing on a Gunner in the center of the group, who went flying and knocked over his comrades. "—more accurate _and_ powerful."

She rolled her eyes. "Exactly. Any moron can fire an energy weapon without missing. It's the truly _skilled_ who use ballistic weapons."

Hazel rolled out from cover suddenly as a few of the Gunners stopped to reload and unloaded her pistol into their ranks. The last of them fell.

"What about Raiders?" Owen asked her. " _They_ use ballistic weapons. Half of them couldn't shoot their way out of a paper bag."

"Pipe weapons?" Hazel replied, her tone dripping with disgust. "Those are barely even weapons in the first place. They're so weak that you might as well be tapping your opponent on the cheek."

"Energy weapons have less recoil. For example, my laser musket has far less recoil than whatever that…thing you carry does."

"The recoil is atrocious," she admitted. "But it could outshoot that old thing any day."

"Wanna bet?"

The words might have started a fight somewhere else, but they were both grinning.

 _God, I like this woman_ , Owen thought as they worked their way through the tunnel. Maybe the Gunners had run out of minions to send down into the catacombs, but they didn't encounter any more resistance until they reached the stairs leading up into the church.

Hazel stopped him before they could ascend. "You hear that?"

He stopped to listen. Overhead, something was _clanging_ loudly. It sounded sort of like metallic footsteps.

"Power armor," he said, a little eagerly. Surely the Commander would come to this battle above all others. Acidic anger burned in his chest, eager for revenge.

She put a hand on his arm as he took a step towards the stairwell. "Don't do anything stupid, alright?"

Was that concern in her voice, or something else? Owen couldn't tell.

"Yeah," he told her, though he wasn't sure if he meant it. "Of course not."

He started up the stairwell, trying to stay quiet. He could barely hear Hazel following him after a moment. Owen had two plasma grenades left. Two could probably take out a Gunner in power armor, or at least weaken him immensely. He could do this.

When they reached the top of the stairwell and peered into the partially collapsed church, however, they were in for a surprise. There were actually _two_ Gunners in power armor—and neither of them were the Commander. Owen could tell because neither suits had the red stripes around each limb—Hazel had told him that his was _paladin_ armor. Whoever, this Commander was, he had probably been pretty high up in the Brotherhood of Steel. Neither of the men in power armor wore as distinguished suits. Both looked heavily rusted, and the black paint had turned an ugly gray. One carried a laser rifle. The other carried a gatling laser.

Owen had only ever heard of gatling lasers from traveling caravans or eccentric farmhands like Joshua. Gatling lasers were like machine guns, except a lot more powerful. Instead of ammo, they were powered by fusion cores and shot bolts of laser energy at high speeds. They could deal a devastating amount of damage in a small time. And they were facing one.

Hazel cursed quietly when she saw it. Owen's brain seemed to stop for a moment, make a strange whirring sound, then restart, like an old computer. How could they face _two_ thugs in power armor, one of which carried a gatling laser? They had very low odds of surviving—five percent or less.

"I hope you have an idea," he whispered to Hazel.

She looked at him, a grim look of determination on her face. "Yeah," she said. "We improvise. Give me your grenades."

Owen handed them over, frowning at her. "What are you planning?"

"Nothing," Hazel replied. "It's called improvising for a reason, Nerd."

And with that, she took her Railroad Rifle, stood up, and shot the gatling laser-toting Gunner in the head.

It didn't do much damage of course—at least, the Gunner was unharmed. Other than a big dent in his helmet, he was totally fine. He spun immediately and opened fire.

Owen cursed and dived for cover at the same time that Hazel did—him to the left and her to the right.

He ducked down behind an old pew and cranked his laser musket six times. That was the maximum amount he could load fusion cells into one blast without causing an explosion. He'd heard horror stories about people who'd cranked their laser musket too many times and had been blown to pieces. He didn't want to be one of them, but he needed the extra damage. He made sure to count exactly _six_ times, not _seven_. The Gunner with the laser rifle was aiming for him, so Owen waited for a pause in the fire before leaning around and firing almost without aiming. _BOOM!_

The laser blast took the armored Gunner in the chest. What was more than enough to throw a regular man in the wall only made this one stumble a little bit. Owen cursed and ducked behind cover again. He wished he knew what Hazel was doing with those grenades; he could really use them right about now!

He glanced over at Hazel, who was fidgeting with the grenades. It looked like she was attaching duct tape to them. She looked up at him and mouthed the words " _Keep them off of me!_ " Owen nodded.

He cranked his laser musket once only and fired blindly at the Gunner with the gatling laser. He didn't know for sure where he hit, but he heard the Gunner curse. Instantly a barrage of energy blasts hit the back of his pew.

Sweat trickled into Owen's eyes, and he pulled his welding goggles over his eyes to keep it out. He looked up at Hazel to find her sneaking across the room while both Gunners were distracted. It was his job to keep them that way.

Owen pulled out his laser pistol and reloaded it. He could fire faster this way, try to keep their focus on him. Whatever Hazel was doing, she needed to do it quickly—the pew he was hiding behind was barely more than plywood now.

Owen fired three times at the Gunner with the laser rifle, then four times at the gatling Gunner. Sweat soaked through his clothes and his hands were shaking. He looked over at Hazel. She was standing underneath a partially-collapsed balcony, taping the plasma grenades to the support beams that kept it up. At least a ton of debris was piled on top of the balcony.

Understanding dawned in Owen's brain.

 _No wonder I like her so much,_ he thought. _She's a freaking genius!_

Hazel caught his eye.

" _Now!_ " she mouthed.

Owen cranked his laser rifle twice and reloaded his laser pistol. Holding the pistol in his left and the rifle in his right, he rolled out from under cover and came up shooting.

Neither of the Gunners were expecting this. Their fire halted for a moment, which was all the invitation Owen needed to fire on them with both guns—the laser pistol for the Gunner with the laser rifle, and the laser musket for the Gunner with the gatling laser.

Both men stumbled slightly, then raised their guns. Owen ran as fast as he could for the underside of the balcony, slinging his laser musket across his back and cursing loudly as he fired his laser pistol, making it seem like he was out of ammo.

The two Gunners either didn't see Hazel hiding in the shadows, forgot about her, or didn't care. Owen had annoyed him, but now he was out of ammo. They were going to cherish the kill.

Which is exactly what Hazel and Owen were counting on.

The gatling Gunner verbalized a string of curses as he and the other one approached slowly, like a hunter would to trapped prey.

 _Come on,_ Owen thought. _Just a little closer…_

"You should have learned by now," one of the Gunners said through their power armor helmet. "Never screw with the Gunners."

Both of them took one more step.

 _Perfect,_ Owen thought.

He made a pensive face. "It's pretty hard to maneuver in those things, isn't it?"

"What?" the Gunner with the laser rifle said.

Owen lifted his laser pistol and fired at one of the plasma grenades.

He almost didn't dive out of the way in time. In fact, a large portion of the blast fried his shoes, leaving him barefoot. He'd launched himself with so much force that he ended up skidding across the old wooden floor of the church.

He heard a second explosion the instant he landed, and he saw Hazel diving to the side as the balcony collapsed.

The Gunners tried to run, but their suits were too clunky. Owen saw one get knocked back by a flying piece of cement and get buried. The other one actually managed to take a step before flying dust obscured him. When everything cleared, there was no trace of either of them.

Owen looked at Hazel. Both of them were grinning.

"You," he told her, "are amazing."

 **x x x**

The attack was pretty much over after that. There were a few stragglers to be cleared out of the escape tunnels, but that was already handled by the time Owen and Hazel made it downstairs.

It was still chaos down there, but nowhere near as chaotic as during the attack. People sat around tying off bandages and fixing weapons. The infirmary seemed to be overflowing, but oddly neither Owen or Hazel had a mark on them.

"Where's Whisper?" Hazel asked Donor, who was sitting in a chair drinking a bitter-smelling cup of coffee.

Donor shrugged. "He's probably in the infirmary, talking to the wounded. You know how he is."

She sighed and walked off in that direction. Since Owen didn't really know anyone else, he followed her. "What are you looking for Whisper for?"

"We need to tell him about how the Gunners found us," she explained, sidestepping a Railroad agent who looked like they were about to vomit and was running for the bathroom. "Best case, the Gunners set a trap for us with the whole missile-launcher-fiasco so they could follow us. Worst case? There's a spy in the Railroad that told them. Even worse case? They did both, just to be sure."

Hazel didn't enter the infirmary, but she stuck her head in the doorway and said, "Is Whisper in here?"

"No!" somebody responded. "Check with Donor!"

Her brow furrowed as they walked back to Donor.

"He's not in the infirmary," she told him. "Where was the last place you saw him?"

Donor sat back in his chair. "Last I heard, he went up to the catacombs to help defend the first floor of the church."

Owen and Hazel both froze.

"The catacombs?" Hazel said at the same time that Owen said, "The church?"

"Yeah," Donor said, looking confused. "What's wrong with that?"

"We were just up there," Hazel told him, looking alarmed.

"We didn't see him anywhere," Owen added.

Donor stood suddenly. He pointed to several Railroad agents. "Follow us."

They all marched upstairs. Owen tripped over a few of the Gunner's bodies once or twice, and he subtly made sure that none of them belonged to Whisper. Wherever the leader of the Railroad was, he wasn't in the catacombs. When they reached the first floor of the church, it didn't take long to search, since half of the room was collapsed anyway.

On a whim, Owen cracked open the door to the church and peered out on the street. Something blew into his face. A piece of paper?

He read it quickly. His eyes nearly popped out of his head.

"Guys!" he said, unable to stop the fear from trickling into his voice. "We have a big problem!"

Donor reached him first and snatched the paper out of Owen's hands, reading it aloud.

"'Give us Q1-91,'" he read, "'Or you will never see your leader again.'"

Silence rocked the room, but everyone looked at Hazel. Her face had drained of all color and her hands were shaking violently. She grabbed the paper from Donor and read it once, then twice. Owen wanted to say something to comfort her, but his tongue didn't seem to work. What was he supposed to say?

Something that wasn't comforting, apparently. "Q1-91?" he asked, his brain drawing connections. "Didn't Bryan say the designation of the synth who knew the location of the second facility started with Q?"

"Yes," Hazel said quietly. Her voice didn't seem to be working as well as usual. It was like someone had sucked all the energy out of her.

Owen frowned. "Why would they ask us for this synth if we don't have them?"

His question was met with silence. Owen glanced at the other unnamed Railroad agents, who looked almost as confused as he felt. When he looked at Donor and saw his shifty eyes, Owen cursed.

"You do have this synth, don't you?" he asked. "Where are they? What do we do with them? _Who_ are they?" He wasn't actually considering turning this synth over to the Gunners, of course, but it would be nice to know options. His shocked brain needed _something_ to focus on.

Hazel looked up at him with sad eyes. "Owen…" she started. He didn't like her tone of voice.

"Who is Q1-91?" Owen asked again, his voice gaining a little volume.

Hazel took a deep breath, preparing herself for something. Then she looked him in the eye, and said this:

"You."

 **So I appreciate your reviews. Can I just say that I've never received so many in such a short amount of time? It makes me SUPER excited when I see one.**


	10. Chapter 10

**Hey guys! Just a reminder, this chapter is from Sam's POV, but it's a little short so I hope you can forgive me. Thanks!**

Sam Lewis sat in his cell and wished he had his Pipboy.

The Gunners had confiscated it when they'd captured him, so all he was left with were the things they deemed too trivial to take. That meant he had a single bobby pin but no screwdriver to pick the lock with, a pencil, a scrap piece of paper, and a little picture that he kept inside his coat at all times.

The picture was a couple years old, but it had all members of his family in it. Sam stood in the middle, an arm around Piper, who was still wearing that red leather trench coat. Her hair had barely started to turn gray, which Sam thought was majorly unfair. Hazel stood in front of them, her arms crossed in the purple jacket that he had bought her. She was younger in this photo, when she was still a teenager. She'd joined the Railroad a week or two before the picture was taken, and already he could see the determined glint in her eyes that Sam saw when he looked in the mirror each morning. A determination to help those in need. And beside his younger sister was Shaun, a grown man.

The photo was taken a few months before his disappearance. Sam half-thought that the time he spent staring at his son's photo was wearing out the picture, but it still looked as clear as the day it was taken, using one of Piper's cameras that she had rescued from a pile of junk. Shaun was thirty-four in this picture. His hair wasn't red, like Sam's was, but it was a dark brown, like Nora's had been, though he had Sam's eyes. He was wearing a light brown trench coat that Nick Valentine had given him as a gift for joining the agency. Like always, he had been clean-shaven.

Sam missed Shaun more than anything.

He'd gone through so much—blown up the _Institute—_ just to find his son. And for twenty-two years, he'd had him. Shaun. They'd been a family, and then they'd added Piper to it, and then Hazel.

They still weren't sure what exactly had happened. Hazel had been the one to discover her brother's patrol dead in the streets of the city. Shaun and Deacon's bodies had been missing.

Hazel still wouldn't talk about it. A part of Sam, the fatherly part, felt awful about including her in the Railroad. About exposing her to things that he'd seen and experienced. Another part knew that he'd have an easier time shoving a Deathclaw into a refrigerator than convincing her to quit the Railroad. She'd been born for this, just like her father. Shaun had been too. Even Piper was made for adventure. Sam supposed it ran in the family.

He was only thinking about this to keep his mind off of the terrible conditions of his cell. It wasn't terribly small, maybe taking up half the room. But it was terribly cold in the room, so much so that Sam was freezing, even through his coat. It also reeked of, as Macready would put it, "urine-soaked garbage." Two Gunners stood guard outside the room and there were no windows, so it was nearly pitch-black.

Sam stretched himself out in the cell, trying to get some circulation back in his feet. He couldn't _believe_ he'd been so _stupid!_ He'd been on his way up to the church to help Owen and Hazel when he'd heard something behind him. Sam had spun—right into a baseball bat. The next thing he knew, he'd woken up here. That meant they couldn't have taken him far—unless, of course, they had drugged him to keep him unconscious, in which case he could be anywhere.

Sam had already tried to escape from the smaller cell that they had placed him in, pretending to be knocked out while a guard approached, checking on him. He'd broken the guard's neck, stolen his keys, and let himself out of his cell. The next room he had entered had been filled with ten Gunners, which is why Sam currently had a black eye and a dislocated shoulder.

The door to the room opened suddenly, and Sam blinked against the harsh light that flooded the cell. A shadow stepped inside.

The man that approached was in Brotherhood of Steel power armor, paladin issue. He wore a helmet that obscured his face, but Sam knew that this could only be the Commander that Owen had described—the man behind the attack on Finch Farm.

"Who is Q1-91?" the man asked. Sam glared at him.

Q1-91. Owen. One of the Railroad's biggest secrets. They'd found him a year and a half ago, and they'd suspected that something important was hidden in his head—hell, the synth had practically bragged about it, without going into specifics. He hadn't wanted the memory readjustment, but it was too much of a risk, so they'd wiped him anyway. Hazel had been assigned to him to both make sure he wasn't a threat, and to check if he dropped any clues about whatever was hidden in his head. A second Institute facility, though? Sam never would have guessed. The pieces had started to come together once Owen and Hazel told him what B8-67 had said. Sam was _still_ surprised.

He couldn't tell them about Owen. There was too much at stake. Besides, Sam sort of liked Owen. He had a positive kind of energy about him. He'd paired him with Hazel for multiple reasons, and that was one of them. He'd be good for her.

"Go to hell," Sam told the Commander.

The man was silent for a moment. Then he laughed, a deep, horrible sound.

"Great!" he said. "I was hoping we'd have to beat it out of you."

The Commander knocked on the wall with his metalized fist. A Gunner immediately entered the room, a variety of evil-looking knives hanging on his belt. He held a giant set of pliers in one hand.

"I hope you've enjoyed your stay thus far, Sam Lewis," the Commander said. "It's about to get a lot worse."

 **Please keep reviewing, guys! Your reviews are great and I appreciate the detailed feedback. I should get on to fixing some of the grammatical errors and stuff like that soon.**


	11. Chapter 11

**Okay, let me just say this: I** _ **know**_ **that nobody likes the Railroad. But** _ **I**_ **like the Railroad. I am not—repeat,** _ **not**_ — **rewriting this story to be yet another Minutemen fic. I think the Railroad is underappreciated. I also think that it would be interesting to have a plot follow them, so that's why I wrote this fic. If I rewrite it, there's a possibility that it won't stand out. For those of you who don't like the Railroad, I'm sorry to say that you (and I say this respectfully) will have to deal with it.**

 **Also: I know that synths can't age, but for this story they can. My justification is that synths no longer have access to the Institute to tune them up when things go wrong or something like that. Besides, it would be weird to talk about a ten-year-old Shaun twenty-five years later.**

 **So yeah. Enjoy.**

* * *

Owen sat in his cell and wished he had a whiskey.

They'd thrown him in here once the arguing had started. Arguing over what to do with him.

The "cell" was little more than a glorified bathroom, with a toilet and a sink in one corner. The room was small and made out of dirt, like it had been carved out of the ground. It was hot in the room, and Owen had to put his jacket on the floor next to him to cope with it. Other things, however, he was not coping with as well.

He was a synth. A _synth!_

Owen didn't even know how to begin processing that information. His name wasn't really Owen Smith. He'd never had a father—all his memories of the man were fake, fabricated by the Railroad. He'd never had a family, or a mother. He had been made in a lab.

Who was he, then? He still _felt_ like Owen. Other than the giant weight that had been dropped on his chest, he felt the same. But _was_ he Owen? Or was he this…Q1-91? Were all things that made him who he was lies? What was his identity?

A memory rose to the forefront of his mind. Not of his father, but of Joshua.

It had been something the farmhand had said when they'd first met. Joshua had asked Owen who he was, and he had replied, "Nobody."

Joshua had laughed at that. "Remember, kid," he'd said. "Every man decides his identity for himself."

Joshua had often mused like that, more like one of the philosophers of old than a farmhand. Owen couldn't even be sure if the memory was real. Nonetheless, the words spoke volumes. _Every man decides his identity for himself._

Maybe Owen's name wasn't really Owen. Maybe he had been made in a lab. Maybe he didn't have a family. But he was still _him_. He may have been a synthetic man, but he was still Owen. He could decide who he wanted to be. He wanted to be him.

As soon as he made the decision, some of the weight on his chest vanished. Not completely, and he was still confused and angry, but he knew who he was, even if he was a synth.

He was Owen. Owen was a synth.

Owen bottled up his emotions and temporarily shoved them to the side. He needed to think logically.

If he had been Q1-91 and he had known something about this second Institute facility, then the Railroad must have known something about it (Owen had strained his memory to try and remember, but he couldn't). Maybe not exactly _what_ he knew, but they would have known he was important. That was why they would have put him on Finch Farm, under surveillance, which meant that…

Owen muttered a curse. Hazel had known he was a synth from the beginning.

He'd already tried to make excuses for her. Maybe she hadn't known at first, but she'd found out from her father and been sworn to secrecy. Maybe she hadn't even been told, but had put the pieces together.

 _No,_ Owen told himself. The way she'd looked when she'd told him…those were the eyes of someone who'd known a secret for a long time and been forced to hold it in. She _had_ to have known from the beginning. He knew that the Railroad compartmentalized information, but he also knew that they wanted their agents to know what they were walking into.

Slowly, he uncapped the bottle of his emotions. The first thing that spilled out was anger. Anger at Hazel for not telling him, anger at the Railroad for fabricating his memories, and anger at himself for not seeing it sooner.

Owen wanted to trust Hazel. He really did. But this was the _second_ time that she had lied to him. He knew it was her job, but he didn't want there to be a third time. If the Railroad didn't hand him over to the Gunners, he'd be careful, maybe distance himself from her.

Shit. What if the Railroad _did_ hand him over? Owen strained his ears, and he could still hear shouting. One of them sounded like Donor's voice. Owen couldn't be sure if the man was on his side or not, but he suspected the latter. Besides, this was _Sam_ _Lewis_ that had been captured, not just anyone. The man was a legend. Men would die to protect their idols. Or, in this case, offer someone up as sacrifice.

Owen also knew that he did _not_ want to be captured by the Gunners. Whatever he knew, he didn't want to hand it over. Besides, he'd heard of their methods of extracting information. They were…unpleasant.

If the Railroad decided to hand him over, he'd…what? He wasn't going to kill anyone. These people were just scared. Everyone did terrible things when they were terrified.

He leaned his head against the dirt wall of his cell. He was giving himself a headache. He _really_ wanted that whiskey.

For a moment, he thought his wish was answered. The door opened suddenly and a guard appeared, leveling a .44 pistol at Owen with one hand and a box in the other. Now that the door wasn't blocking the sound, he could hear the sounds of the arguing full force. Donor was definitely shouting, all right. Shouting for Owen's head.

The guard kept the gun on Owen and slid the box across the floor to him. The door shut almost immediately, and Owen was alone again.

The smell of food filled the small room. Owen reached for the box. He expected the food to be handed to him on a tray, until he realized that most lunch trays had been melted down for the plastic that they were made of. He opened the lid on the box.

There was only a single box of Sugar Bombs inside. At first, Owen was disappointed. Then he saw the other items in the box.

Owen threw the Sugar Bombs aside and emptied the box, laying out all the items before him. There were six of them. The first four were strange combat armor limb guards that had been painted black. They shimmered and seemed to disappear when he looked at them. The fifth was a strange box with a series of knobs and dials along with a big red button on it. The sixth was a note.

 _Your things are in the armory,_ it read, _second shelf. Don't get caught._ What followed were a series of instructions on how to use the strange device, which the note called a "Stealth-Boy." Owen had only heard of the thing, but never seen one.

Owen blinked at the note for a moment. Someone was helping him escape? Why?

 _You're in a base full of synth sympasizers, idiot_ , he told himself. _Of_ course _someone is helping you escape. It could be anyone_. But how did they get ahold of the Chameleon armor?

Owen threw on his jacket, ignoring the heat of the cell. He strapped the Chameleon armor on and hooked the Stealth-Boy into his belt. He wished that whoever his mysterious benefactor was would have given him a weapon, then immediately thought better of it. He wasn't going to kill anyone.

But he might have to knock one of them out.

Owen thought about how best to get his guard's attention for a moment. Then he threw the empty box at the door.

"Help!" he cried, but not too loudly to be heard by anyone but the guard. He started thrashing, pounding his heels on the dirt floor. For good measure, he made choking sounds. Hopefully, the guard would believe that Owen was choking on his food.

"Hey!" the guard said, though he sounded unsure about what he was saying. "Quiet down in there!"

Owen made louder choking noises.

A moment later he heard a curse and keys turning in the lock of the metal door. The moment it started to swung open, Owen leaped to his feet. The guard had half a second to look surprised before Owen slammed his fist into the man's nose. He dropped.

Owen caught the man before he could collapse to the floor, elevating the man's head on a lump of dirt. He might have broken the guard's nose. Owen felt a flash of guilt.

 _I didn't have a choice,_ he told himself. He gently closed the door but left it open by half an inch. If anyone looked over, they would think the door was still closed.

Owen looked at the note one last time, looking at the instructions for the Stealth-Boy.

 _Stealth-Boys last for about 30 seconds,_ the note said, _so only turn it on when you're sneaking out of your cell, past the arguing agents. After that, the Chameleon armor should obscure you from view. Don't do anything stupid, and you should be fine._

Well, if that wasn't encouraging, Owen didn't know what was.

He crouched down by the door. He twisted a knob on the Stealth-Boy and then pressed the red button.

Immediately his hand disappeared. All right, maybe _disappeared_ isn't the right word. He could still feel it, but it had turned invisible, along with the rest of his body. Incredible.

 _Focus!_

Owen opened the metal door and closed it behind him quickly. It didn't seem like any of the other Railroad members noticed, however. They were too involved in a shouting match.

Owen knew he should have been hurrying, but he couldn't help but hesitate for a moment when he heard what they were saying.

"We can't just hand him over!" Tinker Tom exclaimed. "Whisper wouldn't have wanted that!"

"We don't know what Whisper would want, because _he isn't here!_ " Donor replied, his face completely red. "We need our leader! We _don't_ need this…this lab experiment!"

Several people gasped. Shouting increased in volume. Everyone went red-faced.

Owen frowned. Wasn't the Railroad dedicated to saving synths? Why would he insult one? Clearly, not everyone felt as strongly about their goal.

He forced himself to concentrate. He didn't have much time left on the Stealth-Boy. He crept as carefully and as quietly as he could for the corner. The moment he turned into the dark hallway, he felt the Stealth-Boy run out of juice. Not a moment too soon. Luckily, the hallways was dark enough that he had no doubt the Chameleon armor would hide him.

He snuck his way down to the armory. A few people walked right past him, nearly giving him a heart attack. Miraculously, none of them saw him. Tool Tim really did good work.

It was a wonder that no one was in the armory when he snuck in. Gently, he closed the door behind him and turned to the shelves.

"It's about time," a voice said.

Owen jumped two feet into the air, but it was with a tremendous amount of will that he withheld a yelp of fear. He looked over to the corner of the room, where a shadow was standing. It stepped forward.

It was Hazel.

 **x x x**

 _Crap,_ Hazel thought. Why did he look so surprised?

She shifted nervously as he stared at her. Maybe this was a bad idea.

She'd been the first to object when Jonathan had thrown Owen in the makeshift cell, and it had surprised her. Railroad agents were _not_ supposed to form attachments to the people they spied on or worked with.

But dammit, he was just so easy to like! It had started during the attack on Listening Post Bravo. He'd handled himself well, just like a proper Railroad agent should. But he'd done it with a sense of humor and positivity that was hard to find in a proper Railroad agent. He'd shown kindness to Tinker Tom and his son, whom everyone else avoided. He'd shown genuine concern for B8-67…and her. She wasn't really used to that from the other agents.

Her father was kind to her, of course. But he was the only one in the Railroad. Everyone had avoided her like the plague. After what happened to Shaun, she couldn't blame them. They probably thought that she was like a faulty fusion core—she could go off at any moment.

But Owen…he'd shown compassion for her. For others.

And she also understood him. He was driven by a need for revenge. So was she. She'd been gathering information on the person or… _thing_ that had attacked her brother's patrol for three years. As far as she could tell, it had been a single person with extensive combat training and no remorse. There was only one thing that fit the description. A Courser. And now that the Gunners had taken her father away…

But Hazel hadn't _realized_ that she actually valued their friendship until it was too late and he was thrown in the cell.

Besides, even if none of that were true, she still needed his help.

Now he was staring at her with distrust blatant in his eyes. She hated that she was hurt by that, but she also knew that she deserved it. She'd lied to him twice. She'd tried to make up for it, but it didn't seem to be working. She _knew_ she should have told him that he was a synth earlier!

"Uh…" Owen said, looking alarmed.

 _Oh, great,_ Hazel thought. _He thinks I've caught him escaping._

"Well?" she said, not having to fake the impatience in her voice. "Are you going to grab your stuff or what?"

His jaw hit the floor. "Wha—"

She resisted the urge to squirm as he struggled for words. _This was a bad idea,_ a part of her whispered.

"Why?" Owen said eventually.

He wanted to know why she was helping him. Hazel glanced at the shut door. At any moment, someone could walk in and catch them. She'd have to explain quickly.

"My father wouldn't want us to trade lives," she said. "No matter what the others say, he'd never forgive us if we handed you over."

Owen straightened. "I…thank you, then."

Hazel nodded at the shelf where his weapons had been stacked. "Your things are over there. I suggest you hurry."

He nodded and walked over, holstering his laser pistol at his waist and slinging his laser musket across his back. He hooked the rest of his grenades to his belt and grabbed his welding goggles, which he hung around his neck.

When he turned around, fully geared up, he seemed to notice the way that she was dressed. Hazel was still wearing her purple leather jacket, of course—it had been armored by Tinker Tom—and jeans, but she had strapped on leather armor and had a backpack lying at her feet, filled with her belongings.

She decided she'd speak first. "You're going to go after the Gunners, aren't you?"

He hesitated for a moment. It was possible that he hadn't thought about what he'd do once he escaped, but she saw the hatred in his eyes at the mention of the Gunners.

"Yes," he said quietly.

 _Good,_ Hazel thought. "You're not doing it without me. They have my father." Alone, she didn't stand a chance of rescuing Dad on her own. With Owen, she liked to think that her odds had increased. "Besides," she added. "I know a place we can hide for a day or two."

He looked her over for a moment. This wasn't like before, when she'd sometimes catch him staring at her for no reason—she still couldn't figure out why he did that. This time, he was considering telling her no. He didn't trust her anymore, and with good reason.

Hazel wasn't sure why she cared so much. Maybe it was because she'd never really had a friend before.

"Okay," Owen finally said.

"Thank you," Hazel said, slipping her arms through the straps of her backpack. "We can take the escape hatch out."

He cocked an eyebrow at her. "Hatch? I thought it was a tunnel."

"We have two escape routes," Hazel told him. He was still viewing her warily. It made her uncomfortable.

Outside the room, the shouting had quieted down. They needed to hurry.

"Let's go," Owen said.

 _And hopefully,_ she added in her head, _survive._

* * *

 **Please keep reviewing!**


	12. Chapter 12

**Guys I'm tired and I wanna take a nap because being sick sucks—that's why the update took so long today. Sorry!**

* * *

Owen was conflicted.

They'd snuck out of the Railroad late at night, and it didn't seem like anyone had noticed them. They'd ran a couple blocks and then taken a more relaxed pace. All the while, Owen had snuck looks at Hazel, trying to figure out whether or not he could trust her. An hour before, he would have said no. But now that she had helped him escape, he wasn't so sure. She seemed genuinely concerned about him. A part of him—the part of him that still sped up his heart when she was around, despite his objections—thought that was a good thing.

Eventually, once the sun had started to rise over the skeleton skyscrapers, he made a decision. Or, at least, half of one. He decided that he couldn't actually make the decision because he didn't have all the information yet. It was something he'd learned while working on the modifications for his laser musket. If you didn't have all the information for how to make the mod, don't try to guess. Otherwise it could end up blowing up in your face. He'd decide if he could trust Hazel later.

But that didn't mean he couldn't interrogate her.

Hazel was walking in front, leading the way to a place that could keep them safe until they could regroup. They had both the Gunners _and_ the Railroad after them now. Owen made sure to keep a watchful eye on their surroundings.

"Were you ever going to tell me?" Owen asked suddenly.

Hazel tensed for a moment, then stopped walking. "What?"

"Were you ever going to tell me that I was a synth?" Owen repeated, though he thought he already knew the answer. "And that I had this information hidden somewhere in my head?"

She didn't respond at first. Owen walked up so that they were face-to-face, and he could have sworn that he saw hurt flash on her face for just a moment, followed by uncertainty. He was probably just imagining it.

He was sure she was going to say no. What she said next surprised him.

"Actually," she replied, her voice a little softer than usual, "yes."

The retort he had prepared died on his lips. "You—what?"

She nodded, a little more confident now. "You think you're the first synth with a modified memory to end up joining the Railroad? There are contingencies in place, which include telling the truth." She met his eyes and then looked away. "I was planning on telling you a little earlier than the plan suggested."

Now he was _really_ surprised. "Really?"

Hazel shrugged. "If I were a synth, I'd want to know."

Huh.

He still didn't trust her, though. Not completely. But this…this was a good step.

She started walking again. "Come on. It's not far."

Owen hurried after her. "So that whole 'rogue variable' stuff about me…"

"Some of that was true," Hazel replied. "You were a synth we recovered later than the others. When a synth first has their memory wiped, they're unpredictable. In an established safehouse…that can be dangerous."

He snorted. "You thought that I would go crazy or something?"

She shook her head. "Me? No. Some of the others? Maybe. It's happened before."

"So some of the other farmhands…"

"Knew you were a new synth," Hazel finished. "That's why some of them gave you the cold shoulder." She winced. "Sorry about that."

 _Not Joshua,_ Owen thought. _Either he didn't know, or he didn't care._ He wasn't sure if that made him feel better or not.

"What about this information in my head?" he asked. "Did you guys know something about that?"

She shrugged. "We had an idea that you knew _something_ important."

"So why wipe my memory?"

She stepped around a wrecked car. "It was too dangerous. Before, you—Q1-91—were bragging about what you knew." He saw regret on her face. "We didn't really have a choice."

 _You mean that_ I _didn't have a choice,_ Owen thought, but he had a hard time being angry. Without the memory wipe, he wouldn't be who he was. Even if most of his memories were fake. He could still remember his "father" and the way he'd looked when disappointed.

"Sorry," Hazel said.

"I—" What was he supposed to say? "It's all right, I suppose."

She was fingering the gun on her waist nervously. She didn't seem used to having a frank conversation like this. With all the secrecy in the Railroad, Owen figured that it didn't feel natural. Why was she telling him this?

They walked in silence for a while after that. There were a few times where they had to duck down to avoid passing travelers—most of whom looked armed. Owen wasn't sure if these were actual travelers, Raiders, or Railroad agents in disguise. Hazel told him it was better to avoid other people for the time being.

Eventually, when the sun was well overhead, Hazel stopped them. Owen could see something tall in the distance. They must have been walking towards it for some time.

"What is that?" he asked her.

She turned around to face him, plopping her bag on the hood of a car. She unzipped it and dug around in it for a moment before pulling out two baseball caps, a pair of sunglasses, and two bandanas. She handed a baseball cap and a blue bandana to Owen. She kept the sunglasses and a black bandana for herself.

"What's this for?" he asked.

Hazel fixed the cap on her head. "The Railroad checks in periodically here. So we need to make sure that if there are any agents there, they won't recognize us." She tied the bandana around her neck and pulled it over her mouth. Once she put on her sunglasses, very little of her face was visible. If Owen hadn't known it was her, he wouldn't have recognized her. "You might want to take off your jacket. It's a little…distinctive."

Owen did as he was told, and Hazel stuffed it in her backpack. He placed the hat on his head, fixed his wraparound goggles over his eyes, and pulled up the bandana. Hopefully he didn't look like himself. He caught a look at himself in a puddle. The disguise even managed to hide his scar pretty well, and without his jacket, he looked just like a regular scavver in his tattered button-up shirt and jeans.

"You still haven't told me where we're going," Owen said. His voice was slightly muffled from the bandana.

Hazel pointed at the tall structure in the distance. If Owen looked closer, he could make out a little flag on top of the small metal tower. Black cloth with a white diamond in the center.

"We're going to Diamond City," Hazel said.

 **x x x**

When they made it to Diamond City, Owen couldn't help gaping at the massive structure.

He'd heard descriptions of what Diamond City looked like, of course. After all, he had wanted to move there for years. Or…wait. He didn't actually know how long he'd wanted to. This whole "synth" thing was confusing.

To someone who didn't care for the color green, the place would have looked atrocious. Diamond City was constructed out of an old baseball stadium, and it was still the largest settlement around—though it did have competition now. The giant stadium was painted a deep green, tall enough to be imposing without being a skyscraper. Guards in repurposed umpire pads for armor patrolled the outside with pipe rifles. Owen caught sight of a large caravan group leaving the city. A large gate stood at the entrance, currently open to the public. He saw more guards inside.

"Relax," Hazel told him as they approached. "You look like there's a stick up your butt."

Owen relaxed his shoulders. It was just so intimidating. Besides, he didn't like the way the guards were staring at him.

"Wouldn't this be the first place the Railroad would check?" he whispered to Hazel.

She shook her head. "It's too obvious of a place. They know that I'm with you, and normally I avoid this place because it's too full of people."

"So we're doing this because…?"

"It's a stupid move. They think we're smarter than that."

"Great," Owen said dryly. "That's a real comfort. Thanks for that."

He could sense Hazel roll her eyes behind her sunglasses. "Come on, this way."

She led him into the entrance to the city. There was a small counter that was probably used to sell tickets in the old days but was now used as a resupply station for the guards. There were also cement stairs leading up into the city. However, Hazel led him towards the counter, where an old elevator sat behind an old guard. He had red hair that was starting to turn gray and blue eyes. Like the other guards, he wore pads and had a baseball bat hooked into his belt.

"Danny?" Hazel said.

The guard looked up. For a moment, it didn't seem like he recognized her. But then she pulled down her bandana and tilted her sunglasses down, and he gasped.

"Hazel!" he exclaimed. "You're back!"

"Shh!" Hazel said, putting her disguise back on. "Keep your voice down! I'm not officially here."

Danny cocked an eyebrow, but he did lower his voice. "Are you doing something for Piper again?"

Hazel's hand twitched. "Yeah. Just…don't tell anyone that we entered the city. And can you let us into the elevator? I need to see the Mayor."

Owen felt a jolt of alarm. He thought that they were trying to _avoid_ drawing attention to themselves. Talking to the Mayor of Diamond City would do the opposite of that!

For half a moment, he considered that this was some elaborate trap set for him. He immediately dismissed it. For one, why set a trap for him when he had already been captured? For another, there were easier ways to set a trap. He was being paranoid.

"The Mayor?" Danny asked. Then his eyes widened in a realization that he didn't share. "Oh, right. Of course. Yeah, sure thing. Head on up."

Hazel nodded at him in thanks and pressed the button on the elevator. The white doors popped open with a soft _ding_. She stepped inside, and Owen reluctantly followed her. She pressed another button, and the elevator started a shaky ascent.

It was a very small elevator, and it was quickly filled with the strangely heady scent of Nuka-Cola. What did Hazel do, pour it over herself in the morning?

Owen squeezed his eyes shut and tried to focus. This whole "reevaluating-whether-or-not-he-could-trust-her" thing was not going to be easy.

 _Ding!_ The elevator doors opened. Hazel stepped out first. Owen followed.

The room they stepped into seemed to be the waiting room into an office of some sort. It also seemed to be at the top of the stadium, which only freaked Owen out a little when he looked over the edge and saw the drop. A small couch stood in one corner, and a steel desk stood in front of a set of closed steel doors.

A man with jet-black hair and kind features sat at the desk. He was maybe thirty-five, and was dressed in a clean gray suit. He was reading a piece of paper with scribbled handwriting, but looked up when they entered. He smiled.

"Hazel!" he exclaimed. "Good to see you!"

"Hey, Pete," she said. "Is the Mayor in?"

Pete nodded. "She always is, these days. Are you here on business, or…?"

"Personal," Hazel said. "Do me a favor and keep this off the record."

Pete quirked an eyebrow. Everyone seemed to be doing that lately. "All right, Hazel. Should I call up Piper as well?"

Hazel deflated. "Yeah. I have some news to share with her too."

Pete nodded and pressed a button under the desk. The steel doors swung open. Hazel walked inside, and once again Owen was forced to follow. She clearly knew Diamond City, and the people in it (how did she know the Mayor?), pretty well. Didn't Sam Lewis live in Diamond City? Or was it somewhere else? Owen was confused.

The office they walked into had a nice view of the city. Businesses and homes stood in the middle of what had once been a baseball field, and he could see various crops growing near the farthest wall. Below them, people milled about, going through their regular lives. Owen envied them.

The office was well furnished, with a couple couches and rugs to give it a homey feel. A steel desk faced the window with a computer on it, next to a big safe. Doors to the left led deeper into the office.

A woman sat at the desk, typing something on the terminal. She had dark, shoulder-length hair and wore a clean white blouse along with jeans, which Owen thought was rather relaxed for a Mayor. When Hazel coughed, the woman turned, revealing green eyes and a pair of black spectacles. She seemed to be in her mid-thirties.

"Hazel!" the Mayor exclaimed happily, jumping from the chair. She crossed the room in a few steps and wrapped Hazel in a giant hug.

 _Hazel must know the Mayor pretty well if she received that warm of a welcome,_ Owen thought.

"Hrnn…" Hazel said, awkwardly patting the other woman on the back. "I need to breathe, Aunt Nat."

Wait. _Aunt?_

"Oh, yes, sorry!"the woman—Nat?—said, pulling back from the hug. "I wouldn't want to crush my favorite niece, now would I?"

Hazel rolled her eyes. "I'm your _only_ niece."

Nat grinned. " _And_ you're my favorite. What can I help you with? What brings you to Diamond City?"

Hazel opened her mouth to reply, but suddenly another woman burst into the room.

"Hazel?" the woman asked.

The newcomer had similar dark hair, also shoulder length, but just beginning to gray at the roots. This woman wore a red leather trench coat and a scarf, along with a press hat. A ten millimeter pistol hung from her belt, along with a pad of paper. The woman's green eyes were just like Hazel's. In fact, so was nearly everything about her. They shared the same eyes, the same cheekbones, and the same face shape. This woman was clearly Hazel's mother.

"Mom!" Hazel exclaimed. This time, she was the one to wrap the other woman in a hug.

They stayed like that for a moment before Hazel's mother pulled back, looking worried.

"What happened?" she asked. "Where's Sam?"

 _Right,_ Owen thought. _Sam's wife. She's…a reporter? That means that this woman's name is…Penny? No. Piper. Piper Wright._

It was then that he realized that Hazel really was descended from legends.

Piper Wright (her last name was hyphenated with Lewis now) was Diamond City's reporter, creator of Publick Occurrences. Even Owen had heard of her, out on Finch Farm. Occasionally, a newspaper would make its way to the farm. She'd also used to travel with Sam Lewis. She'd been by his side for the journey into the Glowing Sea, killing Swan, and destroying the Coursers. She'd saved his life several times and was nearly as famous as the Sole Survivor himself.

Hazel looked down at the ground. Her face was crumpled in pain. Owen could practically _feel_ it radiating off of her.

"Mom," she said, her voice wavering. "He's gone missing. The Gunners took him."

Piper stumbled and caught herself on the wall. Tears had sprung into her eyes. "I…no. No, that…that couldn't have happened."

Hazel's look said it all.

Owen felt like an intruder. He was standing by the window, watching a moment between family members. He didn't belong here. Should he leave? Give them a moment? Despite his semi-distrust of Hazel at the moment, he knew that her emotions were real. It was the most he had ever seen her shown them. He didn't want to intrude.

"Tell me what happened," Piper ordered.

Hazel complied, telling the tale of the battle for the Railroad HQ. All the while, Owen stood awkwardly in the corner, looking for a window to escape from—er, preferably a figurative one. The literal one he was standing by—probably not a good option.

When Hazel finished the story, Piper was sitting heavily on one of the couches, looking heartbroken. In fact, none of the women in the room looked all right. Even Owen felt bad.

Piper was silent for a long moment. Then she looked up at Owen. "Who's he?"

Owen pulled down his disguise, which he had neglected to do, unlike Hazel. "I'm Owen, uh…ma'am."

She cocked her head at him. Hazel had mentioned him in the tale, but hadn't really said much about him. Piper looked back at her daughter. "Why are you two here? The Railroad agents that check in with the city aren't due for a couple more days. Their informants are having a hard time informing."

Hazel and Owen shared a look.

"That's an even longer story," Owen finally said.

Hazel looked at the steel doors to the office, which were wide open. "And this isn't the most secure place to tell it." She looked at her Aunt. "We need somewhere to lay low for a day or two."

Nat nodded immediately. "There's an abandoned house near the market that's been for sale for years. I'll give you the keys and you can hole up there for a day. No one will know you're there."

"And then," Piper said, "you can tell me the whole story."

 _Right_ , Owen thought. _Reporter. Lots of questions. Great._ _No wonder Hazel is so intense._

He was not looking forward to it.

* * *

 **Yeah, so this chapter is a little slow. Sorry for that! Please keep reviewing, guys.**


	13. Chapter 13

**Guys I just got the Fallout 4 DLCs and I'm super excited. If I forget to update that might be why, just a fair warning.**

* * *

Other than being colder than the surface of a glacier, Home Plate was a nice house.

It was plenty spacious, and Nat told them that the previous owner had knocked down the wall of the nextdoor building, more than doubling the space. Half the floor was cement and the rest was wooden. However, there were a lot of cement blocks and wooden pallets lying around, giving the place a cluttered feel.

Piper had accompanied Hazel and Owen to Home Plate, then stopped by the noodle stand to get some food for the two travelers. The news about her husband being captured had hit her hard, so she resorted to her default coping mechanism: work. In this case, it wasn't necessarily writing a story so much as taking care of her daughter and figuring out what happened.

Piper sat next to Hazel on the couch as they ate their noodles. Owen was sitting on a bunch of wooden pallets. Piper had asked them to tell the whole story, starting with the massacre at Finch Farm.

While the two told the tale, Piper noticed a few things. Owen seemed to be confused about many things. His leg bounced nervously, and whenever someone said the word "synth," he flinched—so small that Piper almost didn't notice. He also had a bad habit of staring at Hazel for a few moments and then looking away with a strange expression on his face. He seemed to be trying to decide something, but it was obvious that the boy had feelings for Piper's daughter.

Piper thought that was amusing. Not because she thought he didn't have a chance, but because she thought the opposite. Hazel had always been a loner, without many friends, so Owen would be good for her. Hazel was almost the polar opposite of her brother Shaun, who made friends with everyone. At the thought of her step-son, Piper pointedly focused on something else.

She focused on her daughter. Unlike Owen, she seemed to be _avoiding_ looking at her partner as she told Piper what happened—which spoke just as loudly. As a reporter, Piper had learned to read the body language of those she interviewed, which helped her recognize which questions they would be responsive to. Hazel's body was stiff, and seemed to be purposely pointed _away_ from Owen.

Piper liked to consider herself an expert in her daughter. So she knew that by looking away from Owen, Hazel was trying to keep herself focused. And that meant that she viewed him as a distraction. Piper was happy about this; even if Hazel didn't have the same feelings for Owen that he had for her, it meant that she'd made a friend. The last friends that Hazel had made disappeared three years ago.

When Hazel and Owen were done telling their story, Piper sat back, worried. "So…your father is missing, and you're on the run from the organization that he leads?"

Hazel winced. "Um…yeah."

Piper gave her daughter a small smile. It would have been wider, but Sam's disappearance was weighing on her. "That's my girl."

Hazel's shoulders relaxed. Piper wondered if she'd been doubting her decision to help Owen. After all, the Railroad was all that Hazel knew.

"Sam wouldn't want you to compromise what's right just to save him," Piper said. "He would be proud."

Hazel nodded. "Thanks, mom."

Piper turned to Owen. "And thank you for helping to find my husband."

Owen seemed surprised that he was being thanks for escaping. Really, helping her husband seemed nearly secondary, but Piper would take whatever it took to get Sam back.

Piper pulled the rest of what she'd bought from Takahashi from her pocket and presented it to them. Two glass bottles filled with a strange glowing blue liquid. A purple label on each bottle read _Nuka-Cola Quantum_.

"What's this?" Owen asked, though Hazel's eyes widened.

"Mom, how much did this cost you?" she asked.

Piper shifted guiltily. "Not much." It was a lie. In the past twenty-five years, prices for Nuka-Cola Quantum had skyrocketed. Once wastelanders had discovered their miraculous healing properties, everyone wanted it. Business owners racked up prices, and the bottles became increasingly harder to find. Nuka-Cola Quantum had saved Piper's life more than once, back when she used to wander the Commonwealth with Sam at her side.

"What is this?" Owen repeated, looking at his own bottle with confusion. The blue liquid sloshed around inside.

"It's called Nuka-Cola Quantum," Hazel explained, which Piper thought was redundant, because that was what the wrapper said. "It's…it's an experimental version of Nuka-Cola. If you're critically injured, it can keep you alive for hours after when you would normally die."

Owen raised his eyebrows. "Wow. That should come in handy."

"Only use it in an emergency," Piper warned them. "Only in a situation that you might not make it out of."

They both nodded. Satisfied, she sat back on the couch, processing the information that they'd told her. Piper had half a mind to go with them to make sure that they stay safe and to save her husband, but she knew that she shouldn't. For one, she wasn't anywhere near as spry as she used to be. She could still shoot fine, but if she were the one shot…well, she couldn't recover as quickly anymore. Time was cruel. Besides, if word got out that Piper Wright had left the city with two other people, word might get back to the Railroad. Sam had believed in careful observation. It was possible, however unlikely, that Owen and Hazel had already been discovered, but the Railroad would _definitely_ know where they were if Piper went with them.

She couldn't go with them. But maybe she could reach out to her contacts across the Commonwealth, see if anyone had seen Sam or the Gunners nearby. Yes. She could do that.

"There's a bed upstairs," Piper told them. "One of you can sleep on the couch. Nat will set up guards around the house. For today, you'll be safe."

And Piper really hoped that was true.

 **x x x**

Owen couldn't sleep.

They'd spent the day hiding inside Home Plate, with Piper showing up occasionally to give them food. All the while a headache had slowly grown in his brain. Now, lying on the couch, he felt like a miniature Deathclaw was attacking the inside of his skull.

He'd had headaches before, of course, but now that he knew he was a synth, he found himself questioning it. He hadn't known synths could get headaches. Although, if they really were just like humans, then it was possible—as the Deathclaw in his head reminded him.

Owen groaned and ran his hands through his hair. He was _freezing_ ; he only had one, thin blanket and his jacket to keep him warm. He needed to move around, warm himself up a bit. Maybe it would help his headache as well.

He threw off his blanket and sat up. The inside of Home Plate was dark at night, so he rummaged through his things (kept in a small leather satchel he had borrowed from the Railroad armory) until he found a flashlight and clicked it on. It was a good choice: there was still junk everywhere, from wooden pallets to cement blocks to a bizarre table with an umbrella sticking out of it.

Owen got up and started to walk around, rubbing the arm that held the flashlight with his other hand for warmth. Would it have killed the previous owner to put some heating, or at least some insulation in his home?

His headache only seemed to grow with each footstep towards the other end of the house. When he was about at the middle of the building, his head ached so badly that he staggered and nearly fell over. He moved past it, and his headache faded. By the time he reached the stairs leading up to the roof, his headache was nearly gone. Walking it off really had worked.

Owen stepped towards the other end of the house, trying to be quiet so as to not wake Hazel, who slept on the mattress on the second landing. Almost immediately, the headache came back nearly full force. He staggered on for a few steps, and once again when he reached the middle the pain tripled.

Light flashed in his eyes despite the darkness of the building. His eyes were throbbing. Something caught on his foot and he lost his balance. _Thud!_ Owen slammed into the ground. His head struck the floor and bounced off like it was made of rubber. He saw stars.

 _He was walking through a perfectly white hallway. Two other synths followed behind him, first and second gen. They carried white, plastic laser rifles. He carried one, too, but he kept it holstered at his waist._

 _There was a door at the end of the hallway. They went through it. It slid open to reveal a man in a white clean room suit. It was hooded, and the man's face was obscured._

" _Q1-81," the man in the radiation suit said. He didn't wait for a response before continuing. "You have been assigned to check on our caches before being reassigned to New Eden. The map has been loaded onto this holotape. Be hasty."_

" _Yes sir. Of course, sir."_

Owen groaned. If he thought his head was aching before…

A light switched on. He blinked against it. It was hard to focus against all the pain, like fire in his skull. What was he doing?

"Owen?"

A voice. Female. He liked this voice, didn't he?

"By the Wall! Are you all right?" A hand touched Owen's shoulder.

He groaned in response and sat up. The pain wasn't going away. "What?"

Hazel crouched down in front of him. Concern shown in her green eyes. "You fell. Did you hit your head?"

His head…yes, he was still concussed, wasn't he? Hitting one's head a second time after that…that was bad. Owen tried to force his thoughts to function.

"I had a strange dream," he said, rubbing his forehead. "My head hurts."

She raised an eyebrow. "So you did hit your head?"

"No. Well, yes, but my head hurt before that. It still hurts now."

She looked confused. "Here, let me help you stand."

She offered him a hand and he took it. She pulled him to his feet, and his headache felt like someone had detonated the Great War inside his head.

Owen placed his hand on the cement wall to lean on it. Immediately, he fell over.

 _Into. The wall_.

Owen slammed into the floor a second time, grunting. Fortunately, he didn't hit his head. Unfortunately, he brought Hazel with him.

He didn't know if it was a good or a bad thing that she didn't land on top of him this time. Wherever they landed, it was spacious enough for the both of them to fall to the ground side by side.

Hazel sat up first, rubbing her right shoulder, which she seemed to have jarred in the fall. "What just happened?"

Owen sat up as well, rubbing his forehead. His headache seemed to have faded completely.

They were sitting in a small hallway that seemed to have materialized in the middle of nowhere. He could see the edge of either wall in front of them, but it was like a portion of the wall had disappeared, which is why they had fallen over.

"Something happened to the wall," he said.

Hazel shot him a glare. "Really? Gee, I never would have guessed."

Owen rolled his eyes as he stood, offering her a hand up. She took it and he pulled her up. "Did you know that this was here?"

She shook her head. "I've never been in this place before. Neither has anyone else, come to think of it. Maybe the old owner put a hidden compartment inside."

He turned around and clicked on his flashlight, which he had managed to hold to in the fall. Despite the lights from Hope Plate, the short hallway was dark. The walls were grimy and looked like they hadn't been cleaned in ages. It smelled vaguely like mold. While the hallway was big enough for both of them to stand side by side, it wasn't very long, maybe only a yard or so in length. An old elevator stood at the end, the call button blinking with a yellow light.

"Where do you think this goes?" Owen asked.

Hazel examined the elevator. She pressed the call button, and a robotic voice said, "Going up." A few moments later, the elevator doors opened.

"I wonder if there are some kind of maintenance tunnels underneath the stadium," she said. "But how did the previous owner get this elevator in here?"

Owen stepped into the elevator. It didn't look nearly as bad as the hallway, but the smell of mold lingered. "There's only one way to find out where this thing goes," he said. "You coming?"

She held up a finger. "One moment." She disappeared into Home Plate. A minute later, she reemerged, carrying Deliverer and Owen's laser musket. She tossed his gun to him.

"Oh," Owen said, blushing. "Right." He'd been so eager to explore that he'd nearly forgotten his weapon. Idiots died that way.

Hazel cocked her pistol and stepped into the elevator with him, allowing him the honor of pressing the button. With a shaky whine, they started their descent.

 _This is crazy,_ a part of Owen thought. _We're supposed to be tracking down the Gunners, not looking at the sewage pipes of Diamond City._

What were they supposed to do, though? Discover a mysterious passage and _not_ investigate? For all they knew, it could be a sewage tunnel infested with feral ghouls, or Mirelurks (Owen shivered at the thought).

It took a minute or two for the elevator doors to open, and Owen found himself thinking back to the strange dream he'd had when he was half-conscious. He'd been with other synths. In his dream, he knew that they were called "Gens 1 and 2s." What did that mean? They didn't look nearly as advanced as the other synths that Owen had seen. They weren't as human looking as he was, all plastic and metal and glowing yellow eyes.

He'd received orders, as well. A man had ordered him somewhere important. The details were already fading from his mind. Where had he been asked to go?

Somewhere called "New Eden." But what did that _mean?_

Owen had just opened his mouth to ask Hazel about it when the elevator came to a juddering halt.

"Khzzzzt floor," a robotic voice announced as the elevator doors slid open. What awaited them was the opposite of what either of them had been expecting.

Instead of a maintenance or sewer tunnel, they found a long hallway that was so pristine a white it almost hurt Owen's eyes to look at. Overhead, white LED lights shone, giving an eerie light to the hallway. When he looked at Hazel, he found that her red hair almost looked like it was on fire in the strange light.

"What is this place?" Hazel asked. "It's too…clean to be a maintenance tunnel."

Owen was wondering the same thing, though he already had a theory on what the place was. The walls looked an awful lot like the ones in his dream…

He stepped out of the elevator tentatively and fidgeted with his flashlight for a moment, which had dimmed during the elevator ride. The lights overhead didn't do a great job of illuminating the place. Who knew how long they had been turned on for.

Owen shined the flashlight down the hallway to find—surprise! Another dead end.

"Why go through all this trouble just to hide an empty hallway?" Hazel asked, starting to walk.

Owen didn't answer her, but he did follow. He was starting to get a very bad feeling about this…

When they reached the end of the hallway, nothing happened.

"What now?" Owen asked.

Hazel's brow was furrowed again. She was clearly thinking hard. After a moment, she put a hand on the wall, similar to what Owen had done in Home Plate.

Her idea seemed to have worked, because a blue light immediately shown under her hand. The wall was…scanning it, somehow. After a moment, the light flashed red.

"Unknown entity," a female, robotic voice said through hidden speakers. "Access denied. Deploying defensive measures."

Hazel withdrew her hand, looking confused. "I don't like the sound of that."

Owen cranked his laser musket twice. "Neither do I."

As soon as the words came out of his mouth, something emerged from the ceiling. The white panels pulled back to reveal two sleek black military-style turrets. Both were aimed for his head.

He pulled his laser musket up to fire, but he was too slow. He watched, as if in slow motion, as both turrets released two blue blasts of energy, arcing for his head.

Something slammed into his side. Owen hit the floor hard, and the wind was momentarily knocked out of him. He heard silenced gunshots fire back, and then a curse. Then he finally had enough sense to sit up and assess.

He took it all in about a second. Hazel had clearly pushed him to the ground before he could be vaporized and was firing back at the turrets. Something exploded as one of the defenses took too many hits. Shrapnel flew by his head.

Common sense returned in a flood. Still half-lying on the floor, Owen lifted his laser musket to his shoulder and fired on the second turret.

 _BOOM!_ It exploded in a ball of fire, and he ducked a large piece of metal that would have been his third head injury.

Silence descended on the hallway until Hazel uttered another curse, lifting a hand to her face. A deep gash had cut across her cheek, already cauterized by the laser bolt that had brushed her face. She must have received it when she pushed Owen out of the way.

Several thoughts flashed through his head at once. She'd saved his life twice now, but she'd also lied to him twice. Perhaps now she deserved a clean slate. Anyone who actually meant to hurt him wouldn't have bothered to save him from the turrets.

"Thank you," Owen told her, standing up.

"You're welcome," she replied, holding a hand to her cheek. "What are friends for, right?"

"Right," he responded, kicking a piece of turret out of his way. "Now what?"

"I don't understand why that didn't work," Hazel muttered. Then she looked at Owen and her face took on a strange look. "You did the same thing up there." She looked between him and the wall. "You try it this time."

Owen gave her a confused look. "Me? Why me?"

" _I'm_ not a synth," she told him. " _You_ are. That's why it didn't recognize me. But it might know you."

He looked around the hallway. "You think the Institute made this place?"

Hazel nodded. "It makes sense. Advanced tech, construction. Fits their style."

He'd suspected as much, but he didn't tell her that. Instead, he stepped up to the wall and tentatively put his hand on it.

The blue light shone under his palm. Owen began to sweat. What if this didn't work?

The light flashed green.

"Recognized," the female voice said. "Synth Q1-91. Access Granted. Welcome."

The wall slid open, and Owen caught a glimpse of another world.

* * *

 **I especially need feedback on this chapter and the next just to make sure everything makes sense—thanks!**


	14. Chapter 14

**Have I mentioned that I'm poor? That's why I just got the DLCs. Also, I have a present for you guys this chapter: Nick Valentine!**

* * *

The inside of the room was practically _glowing_ with technology that Owen had never seen before.

Two pristine white shelves lined the room, filled with strange weapons and fusion cells. He caught sight of fusion cores and the same strange plastic weapons he had seen in his dream. Somehow he knew that they would should blue beams of energy, just like the turrets had. He also saw pure white uniforms with the strange symbol of a man holding his limbs out—like a child's crude drawings—emblazoned on the arms. Other, stranger devices stood in the corners of the room: big, clunky devices that looked more like something out of comic books than functioning technological devices.

On the wall facing the entrance to the room was a large screen that seemed to be a giant version of a television. Owen had seen smaller versions of televisions in decrepit homes, but all of them had been torn apart for scrap. This one seemed to be fully functional, despite the fact that nothing was playing on it—just static.

But the centerpiece of the room was a large table. It was at least two yards in length and width, and it seemed to be a map of some sorts—except it was three dimensional.

 _Topographical map,_ Owen thought, though he wasn't sure how he knew that. The map showed all the mountains in the Commonwealth, all the settlements, and all the old military bases. It seemed to be a very complex piece of technology, but when he tried to look for Finch Farm, he couldn't find it. He couldn't find County Crossing either.

"This map has got to be old," Owen said, frowning at the device in the center of the room.

Hazel turned. She had been examining the shelves full of weapons, but she cocked her head at the map. "You're right," she said, approaching the opposite side of the table. "Sanctuary isn't on here, either."

"Why would the Institute forget all those settlements?" he asked. "They're all too big to miss."

She was frowning intensely. "Unless it was done intentionally."

Now Owen was even more confused. "What?"

Hazel nodded to herself. "This map is incomplete," she said. She pointed to several spots on the map. "Sanctuary should be here…Revere Satellite Array should be here…the Slog should be here…damn, even the Castle is missing! This had to have been done on purpose. The Institute didn't make big mistakes like this."

"Why?" Owen asked. "The Institute would want to protect itself from these things that are missing, right? Why exclude them?"

Hazel opened her mouth to reply, but she never got a chance. A sudden, high-pitched whining sound filled the room, forcing both of them to cover their ears. In front of them, the giant television's static turned to a black screen. Words were flashing across it.

 _WORDS RECOGNIZED,_ it read. _INSTITUTE, PROTECT. AUTHORIZATION: Q1-91. SECURITY FEED ACTIVATED ON NEW EDEN._

There were those words again. _New Eden._ What was it?

The screen switched to what seemed to be a live video, filmed in black and white. At first, it showed nothing but a large hallway, similar to the one that Owen and Hazel had just exited. Then the feed switched to footage of a large steel door. It took up the entire wall that it sat in, and lights blinked on and off at various points. It appeared to be very high tech—and very secure.

"That door…" Hazel said, staring at the screen in what seemed to be a state of awe. "That looks like Institute technology."

Owen agreed. Though he had seen very little Institute tech that he could remember, it looked advanced enough to be beyond pre-war capabilities.

The words _SECURITY BREACH_ suddenly flashed across the screen in large, red letters. Several people entered the frame. They seemed to be dressed in military fatigues and combat armor, and most of them wore bandanas over their faces.

Owen's grip tightened on his laser musket. Gunners.

Instead of carrying their customary laser muskets, these Gunners seemed to be carrying power tools. They must have salvaged them from old construction sites and restored them to working order, because one Gunner revved up a laser-saw. Owen had seen them before but never used one. Before the war, they were used to cut through solid steel. They had to be government mandated, because criminals kept using them to break into bank vaults.

More words flashed across the screen as the Gunners set up their tools. _AUTHORIZE AUDIO?_

Owen stared at the words, which started blinking on the screen after a moment. He looked at Hazel, who shrugged at him with wide eyes. She was just as clueless as he was.

"Er…yes?" he said.

The words on the screen changed. _AUTHORIZATION?_

Owen swallowed. "Um…Q1-91."

 _ACCESS GRANTED._

"…is stupid," one of the Gunners was saying. The sudden sound made Owen jump. "Why can't we just blow up the doors and be done with it?"

"Don't be an idiot," the Gunner with the laser-saw said. "The last crew to try that blew themselves to hell and _still_ didn't get inside. We do what the boss says."

Owen watched, transfixed, as the Gunner powered up his tool and lifted it to the door. For a moment, sparks flew and the sound of burning metal filled the room. Two other Gunners joined in with similar tools.

 _SECURITY BREACH_ flashed across the screen again, more urgently. _DEPLOYING DEFENSIVE MEASURES._

Suddenly, turrets appeared in the wall, just like they had for Owen and Hazel mere minutes ago. They took a minute to power up—time that the Gunners spent scrambling for their weapons—and opened fire.

As much as Owen hated the Gunners, he had to look away for the slaughter that followed. There were five, high-tech turrets and only four Gunners. They didn't stand a chance. He looked back when the screams and gunfire silenced.

 _THREAT CONTAINED,_ the screen read. Then, _COURSER DISPATCH ERROR. CRYOGENIC STASIS CONTROLS UNRESPONSIVE. REQUEST IMMEDIATE MAINTENANCE._

"Coursers?" Hazel asked. She had moved over to Owen's side of the map at some point during the video. "Cryogenic stasis? Isn't that what Bryan was talking about?"

Owen's eyes widened. "The Gunners must have already found the second Institute facility." He cursed. A lot.

Hazel seemed to react a little more calmly than he did. "But they can't get inside." She turned to look at him, the light of realization in her eyes. " _That's_ what they need you for, Owen! They can't get inside, but you can! They need a…a synth to get inside! And a very specific one at that."

He looked at the screen, where the security feed watched the Gunners' bodies. "I wish there was a way we could figure out where this place was. I wonder if the Institute planted cameras on the surface? This place looks like it's underground."

The television screen went blank for a moment, responding to his words. Then more text appeared.

 _COMMAND RECEIVED. SWITCHING SURVEILLANCE TO SURFACE._

"I need to watch what I say around this thing," Owen muttered.

The security feed switched to a view of a large wooden shack, about three stories tall. Gunners milled around it, some of them chatting while others looked like they were on guard. All of them carried advanced laser weapons, though not the Institute's versions. Long grass swished around their feet. One Gunner cooked stew in a pot while another ate a sandwich around a campfire. The audio was still active, so Owen could hear a lot of noise from the militia group.

"It looks like a settlement," Hazel said with a frown. "For Gunners."

The video switched. Suddenly they were staring at a large group of Gunners, all of them firing at groups of plywood targets crudely carved into the shapes of people. Other Gunners watched, shouting insults at those who missed and slightly less offensive words at those who did not. This had to be some kind of training group. A withered tree stood nearby.

"Do you recognize it?" Owen asked.

Hazel shook her head. "I don't, and I've visited nearly all the settlements. Wherever this 'New Eden' is, I've never been there. I have no idea where they are." She muttered a curse.

The camera view switched again. This time, a smaller hut stood. It was made of metal, unlike the previous ones, and only had one story. However, it looked like it contained at least three rooms inside. It was quieter here, because there were less Gunners around it. The ones that were there stood with their laser rifles held at ready position. They must have been guarding something. But what?

A man stepped out of the hut, stooping down so that his suit of power armor didn't hit the top of the door frame. Owen's fists clenched when he caught sight of the paladin armor. This was the Commander. His power armor looked like it was stained with blood, but that was impossible. Any wounds he sustained in battle would splatter blood on the _inside._ That meant it wasn't his. So whose was it?

"Tell the boss that I need more time," the Commander told one of the guards in his deep voice. "The Sole Survivor is being…uncooperative."

Hazel seized Owen's arm in a death grip. Her face had lost all color.

Sole Survivor. Wherever the Gunners were—wherever New Eden was—they were keeping Sam Lewis with them.

"My dad," she said, her voice a whisper. "He's still alive! They have him there!"

"But where is it?" Owen demanded. He flicked himself in the forehead. Now would be a _really_ great time to remember that.

But he did have a dream. One that had specifically mentioned this "New Eden." It had to be related somehow.

Quickly, Owen told Hazel the details of the dream, trying to leave nothing out. She seemed a little miffed that he hadn't told her earlier, but she also seemed too deep in thought to chastise him about it.

"Hmm," she said when he was finished. "This has to be one of the places you were told to check up on. A cache. But why not just order you to head to New Eden first?" She turned to the incomplete map. "There has to be other maps at these caches." Realization lit up her face. "It's a clue!"

"A clue to what?" Owen asked.

Hazel turned to him, grinning. "Don't you see? The Institute wanted to keep their second facility secret, so they hid clues across the Commonwealth for specific synths to find. This map has got to be part of it! If we look at all the maps, there has to be one point that appears on all of them."

"If we find New Eden, we find your dad," Owen said. _And the Commander_.

Hazel looked around the room and walked over to one of the shelves. As far as Owen could tell, it seemed to be full of scrap. She pulled something off. It looked like a plain white box to him, but when she turned it over he could see a lens and a piece of crystal. A camera?

Hazel held the camera up to her eyes, aimed it at the map, and pressed a button on the side. The bulb on the outside flashed suddenly, and Owen blinked the light out of his eyes. When he could see again, there was a small square of paper printing out of the bottom of the camera.

"Oh, my mom would _kill_ for one of these,"Hazel said. "It's a polaroid. Prints out pictures after you take them. This will _definitely_ come in handy." She held up the square of paper to the light, and after a moment, an image appeared on it. It was the map, and Owen's face caught blinking into the camera. Hazel chuckled and pocketed both the picture and the camera.

Owen looked around and found a small supply of stimpaks while Hazel continued to look through the other inventions of the Institute for anything else useful. He looked over at the burn on her face that he received while pushing him out of the way of the turrets.

"Hey," he said, crossing the room to stand in front of her, holding up a stimpak. "You need one?"

Hazel looked over at the stimpak and then lifted a hand to her burn, wincing. "Yeah, couldn't hurt."

She grabbed the healing device from him and tried to lift it to her face to inject the healing liquid into her skin, but she kept missing. Finally, she sighed and held it out for Owen. "Can you do it? I've always been terrible with self-medication."

He nodded and grabbed the stimpak from her. He lifted it to her face and tried to apply the stimpak from a respectable distance away, but it was nearly impossible. The only way to do it would be to step inside her personal space.

Owen took a hesitant step forward, suddenly feeling awkward and hoping that she wouldn't shoot him. He lifted the stimpak to her face, but there was a strand of red hair in his way. Praying that she wouldn't harm him, he brushed it out of the way and carefully injected the stimpak's healing liquid into her burn.

He'd never really seen a stimpak work up close before. It was miraculous; almost immediately, the burn knit itself closed, replacing burned skin with pink. In a minute, there was nothing to suggest that she had been shot with an energy bolt other than a small, white scar on her cheek.

"There," Owen said. "All done."

"Uh…Owen?" Hazel said, her face red.

He was still standing very close to her. That, coupled with the fact that he'd never moved his other hand away after brushing her hair out of the way, made for a very awkward situation. Their eyes locked. But she didn't move.

He quickly stepped away. "I…uh, sorry."

She was staring at the pile of junk, not at him. "It—it's all right."

God, this was awkward. He needed to say something else. Distract from what had just happened.

What _had_ happened?

"Some cache this is," Owen said, looking around, trying to cover his awkwardness. He cleared his throat. "All they have here is energy weapons and scrap."

Hazel froze suddenly. "Owen, what did you say you wanted to do when you moved to Diamond City?"

"Sell energy weapons and…oh."

She stared at him. "We need to talk to my mother."

 **x x x**

Piper seemed surprised when Hazel called her over in the middle of the night using one of the guards, but not as surprised as Owen was by the person following him.

They were clearly a synth, but not one that Owen had ever seen before. It seemed to be a cross between the robotic Gen 2 and the human-like Gen 3. He—for it was clearly male—had gray skin, but it had been ripped away at several places, revealing metal servos and gears. One of the synth's hands was covered in skin, but the other was all steel. Strangely, the synth was wearing an old, patched trench coat and a blue tie, along with a battered fedora. His eyes glowed yellow.

"Nick!" Hazel said when she saw the synth. "I didn't know you were in town!"

"Piper contacted me when you told her about Sam," Nick replied. The synth's voice seemed to be tinted with a perpetual sarcastic tone, though he seemed serious. "She thought I could help figure out where he is."

Hazel and Owen shared a look.

"Actually," Owen said, "I think we've already figured that out."

Piper and Nick listened patiently as they explained what had happened in the last hour, starting with Owen's headache. Hazel showed them the picture that she had taken, which seemed to trouble both of them, though not nearly as much as the news about Sam had.

"So the Gunners are keeping Sam with them on this…'New Eden,'" Nick said, looking thoughtful. He lit a cigarette, though Owen wasn't sure what smoking it would do for the robotic synth. "And they need Owen to open up this facility. Sounds like a trap to me."

"They already sent a ransom note to the Railroad," Hazel said. "They want to exchange Owen for dad."

Nick shook his head. "As soon as you would have handed Owen over, they would have killed Sam. Owen too, once they got what they needed. You made the right choice, kid."

Hazel crossed her arms. "I'm not a kid anymore, Nick."

Nick smiled. "No. No, you aren't."

The synth turned to Owen. "We haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet. Name's Nick Valentine, detective." He stuck out a hand for Owen to shake.

He shook it. The synth's skin felt normal, if a little rough. "Owen."

Nick _hmm_ ed. "So, Owen. You wanted to move here and sell energy weapons and scrap—which is exactly what you found down in that cache. And the secrets of New Eden are locked inside your head. Doesn't seem like a coincidence to me."

Owen looked at Hazel, who nodded. "Yeah, maybe."

He was still having a hard time coming to terms with what that could mean. He'd accepted that he was a synth, and decided that he was still Owen, despite his fabricated memories. And then he'd learned about the cache.

He was Owen, but how much of him was made by these memories that seemed to be leaking into his life? His hopes and dreams had been formed by orders that the Institute had given him in another life. How much of his identity was a lie? He was being thrown for a loop all over again.

"Why don't you sit down?" Piper told Owen, guiding him to the black leather couch. He did as he was told, and Piper, Hazel, and Nick sat across from him on the wooden pallets.

"In order to track down Sam, we need to know where New Eden is," Nick said. "And we just found out that you still have the secrets to finding it trapped in your head."

"What are you thinking?" Hazel asked the old detective.

"I'm thinking that if we had the time, we should take him to the Memory Den up in Goodneighbor," Nick replied. "But that would put both of you back in harm's way."

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Piper asked.

Nick nodded. "We need to interrogate our friend here."

"I was thinking we could use the word 'interview' instead, Nick," Piper said, rolling her eyes. "Owen isn't a criminal."

"Of course not," Nick replied. "But we do need answers."

Owen swallowed. An "interview" somehow sounded more intimidating than an interrogation.

 _Great._

* * *

 **Yeah, so these chapter endings kinda suck. But guess who's almost at a thousand views!? Thanks so much, guys. Please review!**


	15. Chapter 15

**Yeah, so sorry I didn't update the past two days. My schedule has been crazy. And also, sorry for the short length of this chapter.**

* * *

"First things first," Piper said, tapping her pencil on the edge of her pad of paper. "What is your Institute designation again?"

Owen shifted nervously on the couch. "Q1-91. I prefer Owen."

"Of course you do," Nick said. "We're just making sure we get the details."

"It'll be fine," Hazel said, shooting him a smile. Owen was glad he was sitting down, otherwise his knees would have gone weak. Come to think of it, they still did.

"Okay," Owen said, folding his legs up underneath him. "Let's just get this over with."

What followed were detailed questions about his life—everything from the early childhood memories that the Railroad had placed in his head to personal questions about what his favorite book was and whether he'd ever "been intimate with a woman before." Owen did his best to answer all the questions, no matter how uncomfortable they made him feel.

He drew the line, however, when they asked about his scar.

It was a simple question, asked casually by Nick.

"Oh! I almost forgot," the synth said. "What about your scar?"

Owen felt a wave of uncomfortableness arise when he thought about the memory he had of it. He was sure it wasn't even real. Why did it matter?

"Owen?" Piper asked.

He'd been silent for too long. "Can we take a break?"

As if on cue, all three of the people sitting across from him frowned.

"Can you answer the question first?" Piper asked gently.

Owen's eye twitched. He should just tell them. It really wasn't that big of a—

A memory flashed through his head. A new, yet old, memory.

 _He was walking alongside the shoreline, searching for something. The water roared in his ears, but he ignored it. The thing he was searching for had to be nearby. If it wasn't, he would make his own._

 _A twig snapped._

 _He turned, weapon drawn. Ten men and women, dressed in military fatigues and carrying laser rifles, were waiting for him. All of the weapons were pointed at him._

 _He scoffed. It was almost too easy._

 _Before any of the Gunners had the chance to pull the trigger, he pulled his, blowing up the gas canister that the foolish militia members had been standing by. Three Gunners went up in flames and dived into the waters._

 _They fired, but he was already on the move. He rolled out of the way and fired at their knees; three more went down. Four to go. His enemies had a two percent chance of survival. He fired again. Another Gunner went down. One percent._

 _Two of the last three Gunners fired on him while the third, a woman wearing a skull bandana, rushed him, a Deathclaw gauntlet on her hand. Five percent._

 _She slashed at him with her right hand, but he leaned out of the way and she missed. He lashed out and backhanded her in the back of the head. She stumbled forward, but as she did she reached out with the Deathclaw gauntlet._

 _Pain flashed across his face as she fell to the ground. Blood spilled onto his coat. She'd sliced into his face, nearly taking out his eyeball!_

 _She rolled over on the ground, and he stomped on her throat. One percent._

Owen groaned and grabbed his head as blinding pain shot through him. If being a synth was going to give him this many headaches, he needed to start packing a lot of Med-X.

Someone touched his shoulder gently. He was leaning so far forward that he was about to fall off the couch. Hazel pushed him back off the edge, concern written all over her face.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"Sure," Owen grunted. "I just feel like my head has been split open."

"Memory interference," Nick said. "In other words, the real memory of how you got that scar was trying to get out."

Owen frowned. "I…I was attacked by Gunners…"

Hazel squeezed his shoulder comfortingly, which surprised him so much he almost fell off the couch again. She sat back on a wooden pallet. "Was that your original memory?"

Owen pinched the bridge of his nose. "I…think so. Before that, I thought I was attacked by a Mirelurk."

"Interesting," Nick said. He was adjusting his metal hand with a screwdriver as he spoke. "Despite having your memories wiped, the old ones are still breaking through to the surface."

"I've never heard of that happening with a wiped synth before," Piper said.

"Could be programming," the detective replied. "If the Institute was serious about this New Eden, then they would want to make sure that any synth who knows about it would always know about it."

Owen shivered at the thought. _Programming_. He was programmed? All he wanted was to be able to make his own choices. Was free will possible when the Institute was involved?

"Let's ask something simple this time," Piper said, sending a warning look to Nick, who shrugged. "What about your childhood memories? Does anything stand out? Did you ever visit somewhere fun?"

Owen winced at the mention of his childhood memories. Like most of what he knew before Finch Farm, those memories were fake. That didn't stop them from being real, though.

Did anything stand out? Not really. All he did when he was a "child" was…wait. There was one thing.

"I visited Sanctuary as a kid," Owen said, straining his already sore brain to remember the details. "I…went into a root cellar? Yeah, that sounds right. I played around with a pipe pistol I found there."

Everyone across from him froze.

"A root cellar?" Hazel asked. "Are you sure?"

Owen nodded. "Yeah."

Piper frowned. "There aren't many who know about that place. An old pre-war ghoul took up residence there, nearly killed Sam and I when we found the place. We locked it up after that, to use it as a storage space for…volatile items. It's hidden there right now. Are you sure?"

"Yes," Owen repeated. "Positive."

"There's no way anyone in the Railroad knew about the root cellar," Hazel said. "They couldn't have planted a fake memory of the place in there."

"So…what?" he asked. "You think that the second cache is in Sanctuary?"

"It makes sense," Nick said. "Before Sam and the Minutemen settled the place, it was abandoned. Perfect place for a secret cache."

"That's a big assumption," Owen said.

"I'm a detective, kid. My _job_ is making assumptions."

"There's more," Piper said. "I was going to ask Trevor to put something out on the radio about it. Gunners have been spotted near Concord."

"You think they figured out where this cache is?" Hazel asked. "Why would they need it?"

"Weapons," Nick said. "Besides, they might be searching for clue to get inside New Eden."

"And they'll slaughter all of the settlers in Sanctuary to get to it," Piper finished. She cursed.

"We have to go there," Owen said. They stopped to stare at him. "Besides the fact that this second cache will lead us to Sam, we can't let the Gunners kill those people."

Piper hesitated. "Then you'll have to leave right away. The Gunners could already be there."

"Great," Hazel deadpanned, standing from her seat on the wooden pallet. "Just another goose chase around the whole damned Commonwealth."

"I'd offer to go with you," Nick said, standing as well, "but I'm not sure how much good I'd be in a fight. And besides—a dusty old synth walking around the Commonwealth with you is sure to get back to the Railroad."

Owen rubbed his forehead. Too much was happening too fast. They could be wrong. It could be just a simple root cellar. But his memory of the place, paired with the Gunners in the area, made a compelling case. He couldn't let the Gunners massacre another settlement. He'd rather die.

Hopefully it wouldn't come to that.

* * *

 **Does the logic of this chapter make sense? Like, does it make sense that they'd rush off? Helpppp. Send me a review, please!**


	16. Chapter 16

**Oof. It's been a hot minute, guys. How long has it been—a month? I got sidetracked by a separate writing project, but I'm back now. Sorry for the delay. I suffer from this thing called _writer's block_ , which makes it hard for me to update for long periods of time. Sorry!**

* * *

"We're going too slow," Hazel said.

They'd been travelling since the crack of dawn. Once they'd realized the truth about Sanctuary, it had only taken them a few minutes to gather their things. Nick had given Owen a pack of cigarettes and some advice.

"Don't tell people you're a synth if you can avoid it," he'd said. "I've had a lifetime for people to adjust to me here, and I look like a synth. Commonwealth folk are even more afraid of what they can't see."

Piper had also given him a slightly-stern talking-to.

"Keep my daughter safe," she said. "She—she might be all I have left."

Owen had nodded. His heart went out to the Lewis family. In more ways than one.

Now they were walking past the Cambridge Police Station, weapons out. Hazel had told him that the base had been formerly inhabited by the Brotherhood of Steel. Scavvers had already poured over the place, but there was no telling who they could run into. They'd been walking for about six hours. They'd had to sneak past a group of Raiders for the sake of time, but it had still taken a ridiculous amount of time to get past without being seen. They weren't even close to Sanctuary yet.

"Agreed," Owen said. "But there's not really anything we can do about it."

"I know," Hazel grumbled, kicking a rock on the path. They turned left at the police station and took a back alley to avoid the packs of ferals that roamed Cambridge. "It's just frustrating, you know?"

She seemed to have warmed up to him a bit. Before, she'd rarely shared her feelings. Now, she was a little more forthcoming. Owen liked it.

He stared at a crashed vertibird skeleton as they passed. "I wish we could get one of these things working again. It would cut the travel time by a lot."

"Yeah, if you know how to pilot one," she replied with a small smile. "You'd crash it right back into the ground."

Owen raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, like you could do any better."

Her smile widened. His heart beat faster. "Actually, I could. Tinker Tom let me use the Railroad vertibird once or twice."

He gaped at her. "The Railroad has a _vertibird?_ How?"

"How do you think my dad snuck onto the Prydwen?" Hazel said. "It was an airship in the middle of the sky, genius."

"But…" Owen said, searching for words. "How would they keep it running?"

She scrunched up her face, trying to remember. "I think Tinker Tom just tuned it up with a fusion core every now and then."

"Awesome," he replied. A _vertibird._ Damn.

He stepped around an old motorcycle, then paused. "A fusion core? For a vertibird?"

Hazel looked back at him. "Yeah. Why?" She followed his eyes. "You're not thinking…"

"Yep," Owen said, crouching down by the motorcycle and scraping away some of the rust. He grabbed his pack and dug around for a moment before withdrawing a fusion core.

"Where did you get that?" she asked him incredulously.

"I swiped it from the DC Institute cache," Owen replied. He grinned at her. "You're not the only one who took a souvenir."

Hazel returned the grin. "Nerd."

"A useful one."

He set to work. It took a little bit of ingenuity, and they had to scavenge a little bit for the right tools, but after about half an hour he managed to fix the fusion core to the engine of the motorcycle. A few minutes and a little bit of cursing after that, he managed to get the thing to run—someone had left the keys in the ignition two-hundred and thirty-five years ago. The motorcycle was a little shaky and the engine sounded a bit like a dying mutant hound, but it was running.

"Brilliant!" Hazel exclaimed, smiling widely.

Owen rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "Thanks. Uh…you wouldn't know how to drive one of these things, would you?"

She nodded, but she didn't look very sure. "Yeah. Can't be as hard as riding a Brahmin, right?"

He gulped.

Hazel climbed onto the motorcycle and experimented with the hand levers for a moment. The motorcycle lurched forward suddenly, but she hit the brakes before she could slam into a car.

"See?" she said, grinning like a madwoman. "Easy. Get on."

Owen did as he was told, climbing onto the small vehicle behind her. He hesitated for a moment before gripping her waist for balance. A part of him wished that he could have fixed a car instead, but that would have been even more complicated. Besides, motorcycles were faster and smaller, able to fit through small spaces. He just wished it didn't feel so awkward. Maybe he was just imagining things, after what had happened in the cache.

Hazel cleared her throat. "Hang on."

She revved the motorcycle, and it raced forward. Owen nearly fell off at first, and he gripped the sides of the vehicle with his thighs as tightly as he could. They raced under a bridge and dodged a pothole, nearly throwing Owen from the vehicle. He decided then that he'd rather have awkwardness than a broken limb—or worse. They didn't have any helmets, but Owen fumbled with his wraparound goggles so that his eyes wouldn't water in the blowing wind.

 _This is crazy,_ he thought. _This is awesome!_

"Where am I going?" Hazel yelled back to him.

Owen grabbed the hand-drawn map to Sanctuary from Piper and pressed it against Hazel's back. It was flapping in the wind, but it was still readable. He made sure to grip Hazel with one hand and the map with the other. Wrecked cars and burned-out street lights zipped past them.

"Take a right here!" he shouted in her ear.

"Got it!" she replied, then took the turn. Luckily, she slowed down at the last possible second, so the motorcycle only tipped partially over, just enough to give Owen a heart attack as he nearly fell out of his seat.

Hazel whooped as the motorcycle straightened. "This thing really moves!"

 _Dear Lord,_ Owen thought. _I'm in love with a crazy person._

He nearly fell out of his seat again at that thought, but luckily he found other things to occupy his thoughts.

Ahead of them was a blockade. It was filled to the brim with jagged metal spikes and bags full of bloody meat. Tall figures with sickly green skin paced back and forth in and around the blockade, holding hunting rifles and grenades. They all wore chains of some sort, and nearly all were shirtless. Even with the roar of the motorcycle in his ears, Owen could hear their deep voices shouting at each other as they were spotted.

Hazel didn't stop.

"Uh…Hazel?" Owen said, pointing over her shoulder at the Super Mutants in front of them.

"I see it," she replied. She urged the motorcycle to go _faster_.

They hit a bump, and again Owen was nearly thrown from his seat. He tucked the paper map away and gripped her tightly. Why wasn't she stopping?

She leaned forward as she sped up even more. The Super Mutants definitely saw them now. They were maybe a couple hundred yards away.

" _Hazel!_ " Owen almost screamed. "What the _hell_ are you doing!"

"Trust me!" she shouted back.

He cursed as the Super Mutants opened fire on them. Sparks flew as bullets hit the pavement around them. A large bullet hole formed in the steel of the motorcycle, half an inch from Owen's foot. Fuel began leaking from the machine, leftover from before he'd tinkered with it. From what he understood, it was back up fuel for the motorcycle.

Owen drew his laser pistol from his side holster and fired back at the Super Mutants, but it was a lot harder on a motorcycle going at _least_ sixty miles per hour. All of his shots missed, and his hand slipped on Hazel's waist. Without a handhold, he was thrown back, but he managed to grab her at the last second and hold on.

"Moron!" Hazel said with a colorful curse. "Be careful!"

She didn't have to tell him twice. He holstered his pistol and hunkered down on the bike, trying to make a smaller target for the Super Mutants.

It didn't work very well. A bullet slammed into Owen's right shoulder, and he gasped in pain. White-hot fire spread down his arm. His grip loosened on Hazel's waist, but he grit his teeth against the torture and gripped her tighter.

They were only a few yards away from the wooden blockade now. Super Mutants surrounded them.

Three yards. Owen's vision filled with sparks from the bullets. His arm felt like it was going to fall off.

 _Bang bang bang bang bang!_ Another bullet whistled past Owen's head, slicing his ear.

Two yards.

Less.

He closed his eyes and winced in anticipation for the impact.

None came. A moment later, he felt his stomach lurch as they went up an incline, then weightlessness. Then blinding pain as they hit the ground, jarring his arm.

He opened his eyes. They were on the open road again, and the blockade was behind them. The motorcycle was smoking and was shaking even more than before, but it was still in one piece. He could hear the shouts and curses of the Super Mutants behind them as they rode away.

There must have been a piece of wood on the blockade that Hazel had used as a ramp to get them over. Owen tried to speak, but no words came—partially from pain, mostly from shock.

 _Dear Lord,_ his addled mind thought. _I'm in love with a badass._

A mile or two later—well out of reach of the Super Mutants—the motorcycle puttered to a stop, too beaten up to continue. Owen somehow managed to dismount the bike with some semblance of dignity.

"By the _Wall_ , Hazel!" he exclaimed. "That was _awesome!_ "

She gave him a big smile that made him forget all about the pain of his arm for a moment. "I told you I—Owen! You're hurt!"

He looked down at his right shoulder. It was bleeding profusely through a hole in his jacket. He could see the end of a bullet peeking out of his flesh.

Pain hit him like a battering ram then. His legs gave out. The world faded.

The last thought he had was, boy, I sure do get hurt a lot.

* * *

 **Please review!**

 **Here is my dad's stupid joke: What do you call a man with no arms, no legs, no torso, and no head?**

 **Dick.**


	17. Chapter 17

**Yah, so I'm back. Hello!**

 **I'm gonna be honest-I'm absolutely effing terrible at updating. Y'all should know this by now. I'm gonna update this now, but I'm not sure when the next time I update will be.**

 **But hey, better late than never, right?**

* * *

Hazel was confused.

After Owen had collapsed, she'd dragged him to the nearest shelter—some old diner that had been cleared out a long time ago—and dug the bullet out of his shoulder. She'd given him a stimpak and wrapped his arm in a bandage. Then she'd sat back and waited for him to wake up.

It was now somewhere around eight at night. They were close to Sanctuary, but Hazel couldn't bring herself to leave Owen behind to go warn them. And dragging a body across the Commonwealth at dark would either get you shot or robbed.

As he lay on an old sleeping bag, breathing steadily but lost to the world, she couldn't help watching him. His eyes were closed and he had a peaceful expression on his face, which contrasted with his long red scar. She admitted that he was handsome—she may have been a Railroad agent, but she wasn't _blind_ —with his sharp cheekbones and tanned skin.

There was where the confusion came in. There was a definite distinction between thinking someone was attractive and _being_ attracted to them. Recently, Hazel felt like the line had become muddied.

 _By the Wall,_ Hazel thought irritably, crossing her arms. Even thinking about it like that made her sound like a pre-war school girl obsessing over a boy. It wasn't like that.

But she couldn't deny that she'd felt…strange around him recently. It had started with the incident on the fire escape. She'd been so surprised by what had happened that she hadn't moved away quickly enough—so she'd been overwhelmed by the smell of tarberries (did he even eat those?) and her brain had temporarily stopped working. That _never_ happened. And then, after he'd woken up from the explosion, she'd called him a moron. And he'd said, "When it comes to you, always."

What was that supposed to mean? Why was she still thinking about those words? Utterly ridiculous.

And then, of course, there'd been the incident in the Diamond City cache.

That was the incident at the forefront of her mind—and she wished it wasn't, for concentration's sake. She'd already felt awkward asking him for help with the stimpak. She _hated_ asking for help. And then he'd stepped closer and it was like her brain malfunctioned, only able to focus on small details, like the scent of tarberries (a surprisingly sweet smell, despite the name) on his skin, or how his fingers had trembled as he'd brushed her hair out of the way, or how _damn_ close he had been standing to her. And then had come the strange jittery feeling—like she'd just downed a dozen Nuka-Colas.

Hazel wasn't stupid. She knew what attraction was. She'd felt it before, with other men, but oddly it had never felt this strong before. Maybe it was because she happened to like him as a person and a friend.

Odd.

Not that it mattered. She'd never act on it. Attraction was just hormones, right? Hormones could be controlled. They faded. This was just temporary, a side effect of being around him for so long.

In the distance, a stray dog howled, startling her out of her thoughts. She'd say it again: _utterly ridiculous._ Her father had been kidnapped, and here she was daydreaming about her unconscious friend? How old was she?

She checked her watch, forcing herself to focus. It read 8:56.

"Ah!"

Owen jolted awake with no warning, bolting into a sitting position. His blue eyes were wild and his brown hair was even messier than usual. He looked around the diner, spinning his head around like a crazy person. When he saw Hazel, he relaxed.

"Are you okay?" he asked her.

Hazel frowned. He'd been _shot_ and had been unconscious for about six hours, and he was asking if _she_ was all right?

"I'm fine," she told him.

He rubbed his face and then winced. He lifted a hand to his shoulder. She'd taken off his jacket and cleaned it, but there was still a big hole where he'd been shot. "What happened?"

"You got shot," Hazel told him simply. "By a Super Mutant." She dug around in her supplies for a moment before tossing him something.

He caught it with two hands and lifted it up to the light from the moon. It was a .50 caliber bullet, slightly crumpled. She'd cleaned the blood off of it after she'd dug it out of his shoulder.

"What's this?" Owen asked, looking confused.

She shrugged. "It's the bullet that was in your shoulder. Some people get sentimental over things like that. I thought you might want to keep it. Souvenir, or something."

He raised an eyebrow but pocketed the bullet all the same. "Uh…thanks. Where are we? What time is it?"

"We're pretty close to Sanctuary," Hazel replied. "Some old diner. It's almost nine."

His eyes widened. "Nine? We…we have to get to Sanctuary!" He struggled to his feet. "The Gunners will slaughter those people!"

Huh. He'd been shot, knocked unconscious, and his first thought was to help people.

Maybe she _should_ tell him the truth.

Hazel almost immediately pushed the thought from her mind. She'd _just_ regained his trust. Besides, now wasn't the time.

 _He deserves to know,_ a voice whispered.

Maybe he did. He'd find out eventually. Perhaps it was better to just tell him now, while she still had a chance…

 _Focus,_ Hazel told herself. It wouldn't do anyone any good to worry about that right now. She'd consider it later.

She shouldered her pack and tossed Owen his. "You're right. Let's get moving."

 **x x x**

The moon was high in the sky by the time they reached Sanctuary.

Owen could see it from a distance, and he had to admit that he was impressed. He could see old pre-war buildings forming a cul-de-sac, along with several steel huts that looked newer. He saw a few old turrets lying around the perimeter, and a few Minutemen guarding those. Maybe he was wrong. Perhaps the Gunners were biting off more than they could chew here.

 _No_ , he thought. He'd seen them in action. They had superior weaponry, and they were determined to get into New Eden. They'd stop at nothing to get to the cache, no matter how many people they had to kill.

His arm was throbbing as they approached. Hazel had done the best job she could with the stimpak and the resources they had, but it still ached something fierce. Hopefully it wouldn't affect his aiming.

As soon as they crossed an old wooden bridge, someone approached, laser musket at her side. It was a woman of maybe twenty, with dark skin and black hair gathered into a ponytail that exploded into a frizzy mess past her hair tie. She had a pretty face, but one that wore a determined expression. She wore an outfit that seemed more like something out of the history books than functional protective gear. It was an old red overcoat with leather straps forming an X over her chest. It looked like something the redcoats would have worn back in colonial times (Owen had heard about them from an old history book that he had scavenged once).

"State your business!" the woman said to them as they approached, pointing her laser musket at them. It wasn't anywhere near as advanced as Owen's, but he had no doubt that it could still do a lot of damage.

"My name is Hazel Lewis," Hazel said, pointing at herself. "This is Owen. We have urgent news for whoever leads this settlement."

The woman's rifle wavered for a moment. "Lewis? As in Sam Lewis?"

Hazel nodded. "That's my father."

The woman lowered her musket. "I'm sorry to hear about your dad. If you're looking for the leader of this settlement, you're talking to her. My name's Melissa Garvey."

Hazel quirked an eyebrow. "Garvey? As in Preston Garvey?"

"The one and only. I don't think we've ever met, though I don't see how, considering that your dad is my dad's boss."

She stiffened for a moment, and Owen remembered what Hazel had said. _Everyone assumed I would join up with them too._ That was why Hazel had never met Melissa—Hazel hadn't wanted to join the Minutemen because of her father.

Melissa slung her rifle over her shoulder and approached them, sticking out a hand for Hazel to shake. She shook it after a moment of hesitation. Melissa turned to Owen and offered a handshake to him.

He shook it, but he could feel her eyes lingering on him a little longer than he felt comfortable with. Was she suspicious of him?

"What's this urgent news you have?" Melissa asked.

Owen looked at Hazel, who gave him a nod that he took to mean as the _abbreviated version._

So he told her the thirty-second rendition, telling Melissa that they knew that Gunners were in the area and that there was a very good idea that they could attack Sanctuary soon for their "resources."

Melissa was a good listener. She paid attention to what he said and nodded along. When he was finished, she looked very alarmed.

"Come with me," she told them. She spun on her heel and strode off towards the center of the settlement, where a lot of settlers were gathered, despite the late hour.

"Melissa!" a Minuteman wearing a strange militia hat said. "What's the hurry?"

"Those Gunners that we saw in the area?" she replied. "They're planning to attack." She turned to the rest of the Minutemen and settlers, a determined expression on her face. "Prepare the defenses! Everyone grab a weapon! Let's show these Gunners why it's a mistake to screw with the Minutemen!"

Everyone scrambled into action, and a part of Owen wondered, for the upteenth time, if they were wrong. Maybe these people were gathering weapons in a slight panic for no reason.

 _No,_ the logical part of him said. _Gunners are cowards by nature. They'll attack at night, when most of the settlement will be sleeping, so there will be less of a fight. This night is perfect._

Melissa turned to Hazel and Owen. "Are you two going to just stand there? The main bridge is the most likely place for an assault. If your information is right, help us out. Please."

Owen and Hazel nodded in unison, drawing their weapons. Melissa led them back to the bridge, and he didn't miss how her eyes continued to linger on him. She must have been _quite_ suspicious.

"She seems very interested in you," Hazel said dryly. Her face was impassive, but Owen noticed that her fingers were twitching as she brought her Railroad Rifle to her shoulder.

"Interested? I thought she was suspicious," Owen said. "Are those the same thing?"

She rolled her eyes. "You really know nothing about women," she muttered.

What was that supposed to mean?

When they reached the bridge, there were already several Minutemen set up there, taking cover behind wooden barriers with their laser muskets at the ready. A couple of them spotted Owen's tricked out laser musket and nodded approvingly.

Melissa, Hazel, and Owen crouched behind the barrier closest to the bridge. Someone had set up a spotlight on the bridge, lighting it up like a pre-war Christmas tree. Unfortunately, the area beyond was still dark.

That was what made it so surprising when the figure suddenly appeared. One moment the bridge was empty, and the next there was a man standing there. Standing seven feet tall in dark combat armor decorated with red stripes and the Brotherhood of Steel symbol emblazoned on the chest, he was an intimidating foe. Several Minutemen stirred uneasily.

Owen stared at the man. Hated filled his chest.

The Commander had arrived.


	18. Chapter 18

Owen was standing before he even realized what he was doing. Hazel hissed a curse at him and Melissa tried to grab his arm to pull him back down, but he was already striding towards the man on the bridge.

The Commander didn't move, observing Owen carefully from behind his helmet. The Commander carried a gatling laser with both hands, but he wasn't firing. Owen had no doubt that there were more Gunners hidden somewhere beyond the bridge.

What he was doing was stupid.

He didn't care.

Owen stopped a few planks into the bridge. For a moment, he and the Gunner stared at each other.

"You know," Owen eventually said, his finger itching to pull the trigger on his laser rifle, but it wasn't loaded. Damn. Hazel was right. He really _was_ a moron. "If we keep running into each other, I should at least know your name."

The Commander was silent for a moment. "Michael," he said in that horrible deep voice. "Michael Visel. And you, I presume, are Q1-91."

Owen felt his muscles tense. Visel had revealed that Owen was a synth in front of a large portion of Sanctuary. His back itched as he thought he heard several guns aim for him. He prayed that most of these people had better views towards synths than most of the others in the Commonwealth.

"My _name_ is Owen," he said, his voice terse. Hatred clawed on the inside of his chest like a radiation burn.

"Well, Owen," Visel replied, hefting his gatling laser up, "It's time for you to come with me. How many pieces that is in is up to you."

Owen gave Visel the finger.

"Very well," Visel replied.

He pressed the trigger on the gatling laser, but it needed some time to spin up. In that moment, Owen threw the grenade he had grabbed from his belt while he'd kept the commander of the Gunners distracted. Right as the gatling laser fired its first bolts, the grenade exploded.

Unfortunately, it was only a fragmentation grenade, so it didn't pack as much of a punch as a plasma grenade. Fire bloomed in Owen's vision, and the concussive force of it knocked him backwards, back onto the soil of Sanctuary. He landed hard on his wounded shoulder, and he felt the scab burst open, spilling blood on the ground. Stars filled his vision as pain flooded his shoulder.

A hand reached out and dragged him back into cover.

"You _idiot!_ " Hazel hissed, shoving him against the wooden barrier. Worry wrinkled her forehead and anger flashed in her green eyes. "Visel could have _killed_ you!"

"Knew you cared," Owen muttered, rubbing his shoulder. His hand came away bloody.

"I think it was brilliant!" Melissa exclaimed, grinning at him. He stared at her. "You certainly seemed to give this…Visel a fright."

Owen peered over the top of the barrier. Visel was nowhere in sight, but Gunners had crossed onto the bridge and were firing at the Minutemen defenders. He ducked back down as a laser bolt whistled past his head.

"I don't care!" Hazel replied, still angry. Her eyebrows were furrowed and she was gripping her rifle with white knuckles. "He could have died!"

Owen suddenly found himself grinning widely. She was _worried_ about him. The thought made him forget about the guns and chaos around him for a blessed moment.

She caught sight of his face and sighed.

"Moron," she grumbled.

Melissa clapped her hands in front of them. "Battle. Sanctuary. Gunners."

"Right," Owen said.

"I knew that," Hazel said.

Owen cranked his laser musket. Hazel loaded a railroad spike.

The Battle for Sanctuary had begun.

Owen leaned around cover and peered at the group of Gunners that had approached the bridge. They were surprisingly organized for a group of mercenaries. One group of Gunners would fire while the other reloaded and threw grenades, and the other would fire while they did the same. It seemed to be an effective strategy, and Owen felt a wave of nausea roll over him as he saw two Minutemen hit the ground.

A Gunner threw a grenade from the opposite side of the bridge. Time slowed down. Owen could already tell that the trajectory of the explosive would land it right at his feet.

He didn't hesitate. He barely even aimed. He stood from behind cover and immediately fired. Before the grenade had even made it a yard, it exploded in midair. The Gunner that had thrown it, along with a few others, flew backwards, over the side of the bridge.

"You're awesome!" Melissa exclaimed, tossing a grenade of her own into the crowd of Gunners.

Owen crouched back down and started cranking his laser musket. A moment later, Hazel joined him, cursing as her rifle emitted puffs of smoke in her face.

"You really should let me take a look at that old thing," he told her. He stood for a moment, targeted a rather large Gunner, and fired. _BOOM!_ Another one went down.

"I'm good," she grunted, smacking the Railroad Rifle with her palm. It made a sound like a train whistle and spat out a railroad spike dangerously close to Owen's arm.

She caught a look at his face and sighed. "Later."

"Obviously."

Hazel shot him a glare that he returned with a grin. She muttered something he couldn't hear and looked away. Weird.

Was he really thinking about a girl? _Now_ , of all times?

He shook his head to concentrate and peeked around the side of the wooden barrier. Gunner bodies littered the bridge, but more seemed to keep coming.

He went back into cover. "They're not getting through this way. What are they thinking?"

"Circle around?" Hazel suggested.

"Maybe," Melissa agreed, glancing back at the settlement. "There are enough turrets and guards around the perimeter to keep them busy, and the back entrance is just as heavily guarded. They'd have to try something drastic."

Owen frowned. This bridge appeared to be the only thing keeping the Gunners out of Sanctuary. But if Gunners didn't care about losing lives…or radiation…

He cursed. "They're going underneath the bridge. They're trying to surround us."

" _What?_ " Hazel and Melissa exclaimed at the same time.

Owen tried to lift up his head to peer into the darkness beyond the bridge, but a bullet slammed into the wood. He quickly ducked back down.

"Molotov cocktail?" he asked, cranking his laser musket with one hand.

"Louie!" Melissa shouted at another Minuteman. He seemed to understand the message and tossed her a combustible bottle. Miraculously, it wasn't broken by flying bullets, and Melissa managed to catch it gracefully. "Here."

Owen took the molotov cocktail from her, and Hazel used her combat knife to create a spark against the stone ground. Immediately, the cloth at the end of the bottle started burning.

"Cover me," he said.

He stood and immediately heard a bullet whiz by his head. Hastily, he wound up his arm and tossed the molotov cocktail as far as he could into the darkness. It slammed into the ground beyond the bridge. It didn't hit any Gunners, but it did light up the night, revealing dozens of Gunners beyond—but nowhere near as many as there should have been. Before Owen ducked back down, he thought he could see a few Gunners clambering down to the creek.

He cursed again. "Is there a way down to the stream nearby?"

Melissa frowned. Clearly, she hadn't seen what he had. "Yeah, but it's over there—"

Owen had already started moving, but Hazel quickly grabbed his arm. Half-crouched, he looked back at her.

"Be careful," she told him. Again, her brow was furrowed in worry, and her green eyes shone at him in the darkness of the night. Despite everything going on around them, he thought she was beautiful.

He sent her a cocky grin in reply, then ran out from behind the barrier.

Immediately, several Gunners concentrated fire on him. He dove into a roll, and once he left the light of the town, the bullets became much more sporadic. He dashed for the stone wall that led down to the creek and vaulted it, landing in the sand below.

It was dark, but he could hear the flowing of the creek underneath the gunshots above. And along with it…sloshing. The Gunners _were_ trying to cross the stream to sneak into Sanctuary.

It wasn't necessarily the best move, but it _was_ unexpected. Under normal circumstances, natural water sources were to be avoided—the radiation alone could kill you in minutes, and that wasn't accounting for the creatures that made their home near the water, or the current that could drag you away. But if you were quick enough, you could avoid the worst of the radiation.

Before Owen had a chance to click on his flashlight to try and find the Gunners, he heard a muffled curse nearby.

"This was an idiotic idea, Murphy!" a Gunner exclaimed. It sounded like it was coming from Owen's right.

He didn't crank his laser musket—the glow of the barrel would give him away. Instead, he placed his wraparound goggles over his eyes, grabbed his laser pistol, and stealthily began padding towards the sound.

"Shut your mouth, Turner," another Gunner, one with a deeper voice, replied. "Do you see any Minutemen waiting down here waiting for us?"

"I can't see anything at all," a third Gunner grumbled.

"Here, I've got a flashlight," a fourth one said.

"Finally!" the fifth Gunner sighed.

Owen had just enough time to think, _Crap_ , before a light shone directly on his face.

There were five Gunners waiting for him, all of them armed with their laser rifles. They were all dripping wet, and they were all staring at him.

Owen barely hesitated before extending his laser pistol in front of him and shooting one of the Gunners in the head. Immediately, the others started firing, but he was already on the move.

He dashed for the stone wall that held back the dirt above them, and laser bolts flew past his head. He fired blindly as he ran and was rewarded with a strangled curse from Murphy. One of the Gunners rushed Owen, but a shot from his pistol put them down.

The flashlight had fallen to the , but it was still enough to see by. Two Gunners were still standing, and the one who must have been Murphy was lying in the dirt. Owen paused as he heard the clicks of their rifles, signaling the need to reload. Excellent. He raised his pistol only to find that he was out of ammo as well.

He growled something _very_ inappropriate under his breath and threw his pistol to the side. He ran for the Gunners. Immediately, one of them swung for him with their fist.

That strange sense of clarity overcame Owen, just like it had on Finch Farm. He knew what to do without even having to think about it. He blocked the punch with his forearm, ignored the pain from his still-injured shoulder, and cracked his forehead into the bridge of the Gunner's nose. The man stumbled back, nose broken, and Owen kicked him in the groin. The Gunner keeled over, and Owen broke his neck with a loud _snap!_ Three seconds.

Murphy was raising his gun, but Owen stomped on the man's arm and kicked him in the face. Murphy collapsed, unconscious.

 _Ka-bang!_

Pain slammed into Owen's leg with red light, bringing him down to one knee as his knee buckled. For a moment, he couldn't think as agony roiled like a ball of fire in his calf. While he'd been distracted by Murphy and the other Gunner, the final one had reloaded their weapon and fired, just barely missing his dark Chameleon armor and hitting him in the meaty part of his leg.

The Gunner grinned horribly and raised his rifle again. Owen's hand scraped along the ground, looking for a weapon. His laser musket was still on his back, and he wouldn't be able to draw it fast enough, not to mention load it. All his hand found was sand.

"Say goodbye, you son of a—" the Gunner started.

Owen threw sand in his eyes. The soldier for hire recoiled and cursed, and Owen swallowed the pain and tackled the man. He lost his footing and fell backwards.

Owen tumbled into the water.


	19. Chapter 19

Water rushed around Owen on all sides. It was cold, and his limbs lost their feeling almost immediately. Radiation clawed at his skin as he struggled in the water. He opened his eyes behind his goggles, but the water was murky and dark.

Panic obscured his ability to think. Which way was up again? He tried to swim, but he'd never been taught and his leg was aching something fierce. How deep was this creek supposed to—

Something slammed into Owen's back, driving the air from his lungs. Instinctively, he breathed in, but water filled his lungs instead of air. Pain hit his chest like a sledgehammer. The current started to carry him away, but the more he struggled, the more pain made it harder to do anything.

Underneath it all was a distinct sense of familiarity. He wasn't sure when, or how, but he'd nearly drowned before.

His vision had gone red. His lungs screamed for air. His leg and shoulder screamed in pain. His head screamed for him to _get the hell out of the water._

Fear paralyzed him. Sudden, all-encompassing fear. He was going to die here.

A hand grabbed the back of his jacket and hauled him upward. As soon as his head broke the surface, Owen started spluttering and vomiting the water out of his lungs. He crawled onto the sand, and whoever had rescued him made sure that his feet were out of the water. Owen retched the rest of the water out and took several deep, long breaths before he looked up at his savior.

A man stood before him, about his height and build. He had jet black hair streaked with gray combed neatly on top of his head, and he had a thick beard and bushy eyebrows. Harsh, angular features stared back at Owen, along with two brown eyes that looked very, very tired.

He was also wearing a Gunner's combat armor.

Alarm shot through Owen, immediately followed by confusion. This man…this _Gunner_ …he hadn't been among the five that Owen had fought. Where had he come from? Why had he saved Owen? _Why wasn't he attacking?_

Owen looked around in confusion, wondering if he'd hit his head while he'd been underwater. He was back on the shore by the Minutemen's side of the bridge, the bodies of the Gunners strewn around him. Where had this man come from?

When he looked back, the Gunner was gone.

 **x x x**

Owen limped back up the the Minutemen's blockade a few minutes later. He'd placed several rigged frag grenades by the shore of the creek just in case any more Gunners got any ideas. A hastily-applied stimpak had fixed his leg and his shoulder temporarily, enough to allow him to struggle up the incline to Sanctuary with sopping wet clothes. He felt sick and decided that he'd probably soaked up too much radiation. He was a mess, but compared to the sight waiting for him when he returned, he was in prime condition.

The bodies of several Minutemen were lying on the ground, blood making the ground slick and slippery. Their discarded weapons lay nearby, and bullets littered the ground as well. Fortunately, there was still a fair number of Minutemen to defend. All was not lost—not yet.

Owen dove behind Hazel and Melissa's barrier as the Gunners on the other side of the bridge started firing on him again. He winced as his injuries were jarred.

"You're back!" Hazel exclaimed with a frown. "And soaking wet. What happened?"

"Oh, you know," Owen said, trying not to show how much pain he was in. "Killed a few Gunners. Almost drowned. The usual."

Concern sparked in her eyes again. He'd be lying if he said that seeing that didn't make him happy.

"For a nerd," she said carefully, eyes closed, clearly frustrated, "you sure are _stupid._ "

"Yup," Owen replied, trying to sit up, then hissing in pain when his injured leg scraped against the ground.

Hazel's green eyes flicked to his leg, then darkened. "You're hurt again, aren't you?"

A bullet slammed into the wood behind them. Owen flinched, then responded. "Uh…yeah."

"I just met you," Melissa said, shooting over the barrier, "but I'm pretty sure that this is a regular occurence. You should fix that."

"Yeah, yeah," Owen grumbled.

Hazel scowled. "This battle has gone on long enough. We need to end this now, before anyone else gets hurt. You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Maybe the Institute had some kind of weapon down there to help us?" Owen replied.

"Bingo."

"Woah, what?" Melissa exclaimed, looking at both of them like they were crazy. " _Institute?_ Nobody said anything about the effing _Institute!_ "

"Long story," Owen said at the same time that Hazel said, "You wouldn't believe us if we told you."

Melissa stared at them. Finally, she said, "Well, if you have a plan, go for it!"

Hazel pointed to a house in the distance. "We need to get there."

"Why?" Melissa asked, then shook her head. "You know what? Never mind. You two are crazy, but you might just end up saving us. Lead the way." She started shouting to another Minuteman, telling him to hold down the fort.

Hazel nodded and threw her last grenade over the barricade and into the crowd of Gunners over the bridge. As soon as it exploded, she dashed out from behind the wooden barrier, and Owen did his best to follow. The Gunners were too distracted by the explosion to start firing at them.

Owen winced with each step, but he managed to keep up with Hazel. They passed several running Minutemen and panicked-looking settlers on the way, and the turrets were spinning around frantically, trying to find targets to fire at. The gunfire was loud in the night. Hazel was right. If they didn't end this soon, this could very well be Sanctuary's last stand.

Hazel skidded to a stop in front of a blue, torn up, pre-war house. There were several sleeping bags set up inside, but no one was around. Melissa looked at Owen in confusion, but he just shrugged and followed Hazel around to the back of the house, clicking on his flashlight. Luckily, there didn't seem to be any Gunners in this area, so he didn't have to worry about giving away their position.

Hazel stopped at the back of the house and asked Owen to shine the flashlight on a patch of dirt. It was higher than the rest of the ground around it and seemed to be a small hill.

She growled a curse. "We don't have time to dig this up."

Melissa seemed very confused now. "Why would we need to dig this up?"

Hazel ignored her and looked at Owen. "Do you have any grenades left?"

He nodded and pulled his last grenade from his belt and handed it to her. Carefully she dug out a small patch of dirt and pulled the pin out of the grenade. She placed it inside and then started to run away, and Owen and Melissa quickly followed. A moment later, the explosion sent up a fireball into the sky.

"You two are violent," Melissa muttered unhappily.

They ignored her and walked around to the back of the house. The dirt pile had been blown away, along with part of the dark metal doors leading down into the earth. The metal was steaming, but Hazel used the tip of her Railroad Rifle to open the doors. She went first, and Owen quickly followed.

The root cellar seemed vaguely familiar to Owen. He couldn't put his finger on it, but for some reason he knew he'd been there before. It was made out of dirty cement, and metal shelves lined the walls. A cot was set up in one corner, along with two sleeping bags. Old boxes of food sat on the shelves, along with .38 rounds. A pipe pistol sat near an empty wall.

"This used to be a hiding place for synths," Hazel said, looking around. "Back when I was a kid."

Owen looked around and eventually walked towards the pipe pistol. The place smelled like must, but the area by the pipe pistol smelled different. Almost…like oil?

"I didn't even know this place was here," Melissa said. "My dad never told me."

"My dad told him not to tell anyone," Hazel replied with a wave of her hand, inspecting a bottle of Nuka Cola. "Top secret, and all that."

Owen stared at the wall, only half listening. Warily, he pressed his palm against the cement. Immediately, the dirt and cement bricks rolled back to reveal a small hallway with steps leading down.

"No elevator this time?" Hazel asked, stepping up beside him and peering into the darkness.

"Maybe this cache isn't as deep underground as the last one," Owen responded. "If there's a vault nearby, they probably wanted to avoid intersecting it."

"Makes sense," Hazel said. She swallowed. "You want to go first, Nerd?"

"Not really." Owen took his laser musket from off his back and cranked it three times. "But here goes."

"I think I'm gonna stay here," Melissa said. "Watch your backs."

Hazel nodded at her. "Thank you. I appreciate that."

Owen smiled as well. "If any Gunners come by, give them my regards."

Melissa nodded. "Got it."

Owen nodded at Hazel and then stepped into the hallway, using the light from his charged laser musket to light the way.

The stairs were made out of cement, but some kind of liquid had been dripping on them. He nearly slipped and fell on his face more than once, and he had to go at a snail's pace to keep himself from falling over.

When they finally reached the bottom, the setting was familiar. A long, white hallway (covered in a thin layer of mold, no doubt from whatever liquid had been dripping onto the stairs) met a dead end, and Owen couldn't help but wince.

 _Great,_ he thought. _More walking._

He limped forward, thankful for the lights overhead so that he wouldn't lose his footing for the second time that night. The floor was rather slippery, and he put one hand on the wall to stabilize himself as he walked. Behind him, he heard Hazel doing the same.

Maybe he was imagining things, but he thought he could hear explosions far overhead. Owen felt worry twist in his gut like a knife. If they didn't hurry, the Minutemen above them might be completely wiped out.

It felt like forever before they reached the wall, but reach it they did. The moment he was close enough, Owen reached out his good arm and pressed his hand against the wall, grimacing at the mold that coated his palm. Despite the muck, the blue light that scanned his hand was clearly visible, and a moment later the wall parted, revealing the cache inside.

"Well," Owen said after a second. "That's unexpected. I thought the Institute only used energy weapons?"

Hazel stepped up next to him, grinning like a maniac. "Apparently, even they saw the sense in ballistic weapons."

The room beyond was, indeed, filled to the brim with ballistic weapons. There were the two white shelves from before. One was packed to the brim with all sorts of weapons: ten millimeters, sniper rifles, hundreds of mines, even something that looked like a portable naval cannon. The other shelf was covered in boxes of ammunition. And of course, in the center of the room was the topographical map.

"Do you have the camera?" Owen asked Hazel, stepping up to the map. It was clearly different from the other one; Sanctuary was clearly listed on the map, along with the Castle, and the Slog. Owen had never really traveled much around the Commonwealth (at least, not that he _remembered_ ), so he couldn't really say what else was missing, but Hazel examined it as she took out the little polaroid camera.

"No Diamond City," she said, squinting at the blue lines on the map. "Or University Point. Hell, not even the Institute itself is on here."

"Was it on the last one?" Owen said, wincing as he lifted his bad arm to scratch his brow.

Hazel nodded. "You just have to know where to look." She grinned at him before she raised the camera to her face and snapped a picture of the map. A moment later, the picture printed out of the bottom. As far as Owen could tell, it was identical to the previous one, but he would no doubt be able to tell the difference with closer scrutiny.

A loud explosion suddenly sounded overhead. It sounded almost like a grenade. Owen was so startled that he stumbled and had to catch himself on the edge of the map.

"We must be right underneath the Gunners," he said, once he had stabilized himself.

Hazel looked at him, then at the mines next to the cannon. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

Owen grinned so widely that he felt as if his face would crack. "You're brilliant."

For a moment, he thought he saw her face flush, but then she turned to the mines and he thought he must have imagined it.

"All I have to do," Hazel muttered, fiddling with one of the mines, "is hook up one to a detonator, and when it blows up, so should the rest." She turned around, holding a black square with a red button in the center. He had no idea where she'd gotten it from. "All right. I think we're good to go."

"Where did you learn about explosives?" Owen asked, snatching a small supply of stimpaks and stuffing them in his bag.

"Turns out you learn a lot from the people your dad hangs out with when they're all combat-ready," she replied, turning to the stairs. "Learned it from a guy named Macready. He started experimenting with explosives a few years ago. Ready?"

"Ready."

 **x x x**

When they reached the surface again, Sanctuary smelled like death and ozone—not good signs. Owen could still see flashes of light being fired from the bridge, but the Minutemen's side fired far less frequently than the Gunner's.

He looked at Hazel. "You're sure this is on the Gunner's side, right?"

She nodded, looking determined. "Yes. I have an excellent sense of direction."

"Well," Melissa chimed in, "if you're wrong, I'll kill you myself."

And on that happy note, Hazel pushed the button.

 _BOOOOOOM!_

A giant fireball burst into existence, lighting up the night like a second sun. Owen covered his ears, but the sound was still deafening. Luckily, it was right where Hazel thought it was, on the other side of the bridge. Owen thought he could see dozens of Gunners either burning up or running away—and despite his hatred for the mercenaries, the sight made him a little sick.

A few moments of pure silence passed. Then a cheer went up, from somewhere within Sanctuary. It was followed by dozens more, until the whole settlement was filled with cheers.

Owen couldn't help but sag in relief.

The fight was over.


	20. Chapter 20

There was a celebration in Sanctuary that night. Owen lost track of the number of people who tried to give him a beer, or a whiskey, or even just a Nuka-Cola. He and Hazel were both hailed as heroes, which was one of the strangest experiences of his life. Eventually, he managed to get a hut to himself, where he attempted to heal his numerous wounds. Seriously, why did _everyone_ view him as target practice? Hazel had only been injured once!

He was right in the middle of cursing up a storm as he twisted his body to inject a stimpak into his leg—which _hurt_ —when he heard a knock on his door.

"Come in!" Owen had to shout, because the noise outside was almost as loud as the bomb from an hour ago.

Hazel opened the door a moment later, hand over her ears. Outside, the partiers sounded like they were trying to tip a Brahmin. For all he knew, they were.

"Hey," Owen grunted, sighing in relief as the wound in his leg healed up. He quickly tied a bandage around it as she spoke.

"Hey," she replied, closing the door behind her and leaning against it. "How are you feeling?"

"Sore," he said, grimacing as he finished tying the bandage. "I need to learn how to not get shot as much."

She snorted. "You say that as if it's news."

Owen glared at her as he moved on to his shoulder, hissing in pain as he peeled off his jacket.

Hazel sighed. "Here, let me." She held out her hand for the stimpak in his good hand. He considered her offer for a moment before nodding and giving it to her.

It took him a minute to undo the top buttons on his shirt, and it took him an even longer minute to get his arm outside of it—he figured Hazel wouldn't appreciate it if he just disrobed in front of her. He flushed just at the thought of that.

She stepped behind him (for he was sitting in a small metal chair in the center of the hut) and put a hand on his shoulder, probably to keep him from moving. Her palm was warm, and Owen barely restrained a shiver.

"How did the Gunners find this place before us?" Hazel asked, starting to unwrap the soiled bandage on Owen's shoulder.

"I don't know," he responded, frowning. He winced and sucked in air through his teeth as the wound on his shoulder was exposed to air. "Ouch."

"Sorry," Hazel told him. He imagined she was shaking her head as she looked at the open wound. "Moron. You need to be more careful. _What_ are you grinning about?"

Owen quickly wiped the look off his face. "Nothing." He couldn't very well admit that he loved it when she was concerned about him, could he? She'd probably punch him, which defeated the point.

He could feel her glaring at him and had to try very hard not to smile again. He heard her sigh again and inject the stimpak into his wound. He closed his eyes and felt some of the pain melt away.

"Doesn't it seem strange, though?" Hazel continued. She removed the stimpak and started wrapping a new bandage around his shoulder. It brought her very close to him—so close that he could feel her breath on his neck. She hesitated a moment before she spoke again. "They only attacked once you and I arrived, and we were delayed for several hours."

Owen swallowed as heat slowly started spreading down his neck. It was hard to focus on what she was saying. If he turned his head to the right, their faces would be touching. He wasn't bold enough to try it. Instead, he looked down at his hands, which were clasped tightly together. "Urm…yeah, actually. That does sound a little strange. What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking," Hazel said, her warm hands pressing firmly against his shoulder as she wrapped the bandage, "that maybe you had some sort of tracker put in you."

He was so stunned by this suggestion—who just formulates _that_ idea off the top of their head?—that when he did turn his head, it was completely unintentional.

Two surprised green eyes stared back into his blue ones. This close to Hazel, he could see the soft dusting of freckles across her nose, and he could feel her breath on his jaw. It took every ounce of self-control he had not to look down at her mouth—or worse, press it against his own. The desire to kiss her had never been this strong before. The tip of her nose was less than an inch from his, and she had frozen, her hands still on his shoulder.

He needed to remind himself what they were talking about again. "Wh-what makes you say that?"

Hazel held his gaze for another long moment—a moment that he hadn't expected to exist in the first place—before breaking eye contact and finishing the knot on his bandage. Then she moved away so quickly, it was as if she had been burned. Her back thudded into the metal wall of the shack before she spoke.

"S-s-some synths h-had trackers put in them before the Institute fell," she said, her voice unexpectedly shaky. She coughed, and seemed to regain some of her composure. "Maybe, if the Gunners found the second Institute facility, they're smart enough to activate yours. It would explain how they knew where this cache was."

"But then why follow us back to HQ if they could do that?" Owen asked, observing her with muted confusion and surprise.

She shrugged, avoiding eye contact. "They must have figured out how to do it _after_ the attack."

Owen frowned as he put his arm back in his shirt. The pain was significantly reduced, now. "How do you know? And if it's true, what do we do about it?"

Hazel rubbed her neck. "I don't know for sure. But it makes sense, doesn't it? And it's worth a look. Even if it's not true, it might throw everyone off our trail."

Owen thought about that as he buttoned his shirt back up. Finally, he relented. "Fine. Where do we have to go?"

"That's the problem," Hazel said. Finally, she looked directly at him, and he felt a tiny thrill at the shakiness of her eyes—that is, until he realized that it had more to do with what she said next.

"We'd have to go into Gunner territory."


	21. Chapter 21

Goodneighbor was, in Hazel's opinion, the worst place in the Commonwealth.

She'd only been there a few times before—once, when she'd first joined the Railroad, and a second time when she needed to eliminate a threat to the Railroad. She considered herself lucky that she had remembered to pack the disguises on their way out of Sanctuary; the ghouls in Goodneighbor had long memories.

It had been a few days since the battle at Sanctuary, and Owen and Hazel had managed to sneak out to Goodneighbor without too much incident—other than a Mister Gutsy that Owen had somehow talked into exploding by repeating everything it said.

Hazel was almost more on edge because of the peaceable nature of their journey than if they'd run into trouble every hour. She'd expected there to be a thick crowd of Gunners near Goodneighbor, since they'd always crowded near the easy-access-chem-dealing town. But they hadn't come across a single Gunner, not to mention any Railroad agents.

It was times like these that Hazel wished she still had access to a Railroad radio, or even just a dead drop. She longed to know what was happening—not just because of her father, but because she wanted to know if the Gunners had attacked any more settlements or safehouses.

"How do I look?" Owen asked her, emerging from around the side of the mailbox they'd used for privacy as they'd changed.

Hazel wrestled down the urge to say, _handsome_ with a stubborn tenacity. He did _not_ look _handsome._ He looked…

"Adequate," Hazel told him, analyzing his costume (in a purely professional manner, of course).

Owen was wearing simple suspenders and slacks, but with a green woolen cap. Most triggermen in Goodneighbor wore something similar, so he wouldn't be too out of place. She found her desire to brush the one lock of hair that escaped from under his beanie immeasurably frustrating. Her hormones were driving her _insane_.

She, on the other hand, wore a simple scavenger outfit, so she'd look like another Commonwealth prospector looking to resupply. Both of their normal, more comfortable clothes were hidden in their bags. They were just outside the entrance to Goodneighbor, and Hazel found herself looking around in a bit of a paranoid manner.

"Put this on," Hazel told Owen, tossing him a green bandana.

If she was being a little terse, well…good. She couldn't risk another _incident_ like the one in Sanctuary or the DC cache messing with her sensibilities.

"You got it, boss." Owen pulled the bandana over his face as ordered, and she could feel his eyes watching her even as he pulled on his goggles.

Hazel shook her head to clear her thoughts and pulled on her own bandana and sunglasses. She needed to get a grip, or her father was doomed.

"The Gunners are sometimes allowed in Goodneighbor," she told her partner, "so long as they don't cause trouble. As long as we keep our head down, we should be fine."

Owen nodded. "Where are we going, again?"

Hazel frowned behind her bandana. She might as well tell him.

"We're going to see Doctor Amala," she said. "The woman who wiped your memories."

 **x x x**

"You want me to _what?"_ Amala demanded.

Hazel winced. Amala had always been…abrasive. It seemed that the past several years, and old age, had not mellowed her out a bit.

She was an older Asian woman with a fair amount of gray in her hair. She had started wearing reading glasses in her old age, though her hands still looked plenty steady for a doctor. Good. They'd need to be.

They were sitting in the basement of the Memory Den. Well, Hazel and Amala were sitting on the small red couch near the wall. Owen was pacing up and down the room and kept glancing at the memory lounger in the room with something close to animosity.

"We need you to hook find the tracker in Owen and…disable it." Hazel figured that Owen would not appreciate the phrase "cut it out."

Amala was already shaking her head. "Even if I knew where it was, I wouldn't do it. It's too risky."

"But—" Hazel started, feeling her eye twitch.

"Think of it this way," Owen suddenly said, stopping his pacing to turn around and stare right at the doctor. "Either you get this tracker out of me and disable it, or I'll stay right here until the Gunners come knocking on your door."

Amala and Hazel both stared at him. Hazel, for one, wasn't expecting such a bold statement from him, but she guessed that being so close to a memory lounger probably put him on edge.

Amala looked him over. "I remember you now. Q1-91. The one—"

"Are you going to do it or not?" Hazel interrupted, feeling her heart jump out of her chest with how close the doctor came to revealing the truth.

Amala glared at her, then at Owen. Then:

"Fine. Owen, is it? Take off your shirt."

Five minutes later, Owen was sitting shirtless on a table, watching Doctor Amala warily. He made no attempt to hide his dislike of doctors or surgical procedures, but Amala ignored him.

Hazel, on the other hand, was having a harder time. She'd seen Owen shirtless before, but it was when half of his torso had been covered in bandages. She swallowed and looked up at the ceiling so that the dizzy feeling she got when she looked at him would go away. This was making her _angry._

Amala held a geiger counter up to Owen's chest and _hmm_ ed.

"What's that for?" Owen asked, not even bothering to hide the wariness in his voice.

"Institute trackers give off a slight radioactive signal," Amala replied in a matter-of-fact voice.

"They _what?"_

"Owen," Hazel said, forcing herself to look at him and keep her attraction to him off of her face, "it'll be fine. Amala has done this before. You're in good hands."

Owen looked at her, swallowed, and then relaxed as Amala scanned him with the geiger counter.

After a few minutes of tense silence, Amala's frown deepened. She looked up at Owen with confusion on her face.

"Have you soaked up any rads recently?"

Owen grimaced. "Yeah." Then, to Hazel, "I fell in the creek below the bridge."

Hazel covered her face with her hand, more to hide her growing concern for her careless companion than anything else. " _Moron._ " She knew he'd fallen, but she'd forgotten just how soaked with rads the creek was.

He smiled at her, but Amala rolled her eyes.

"Well, I can't find the tracker with all the radiation in your skin, and I don't have any rad-aways on hand." She shook her head. "That's all I can do for you."

"Wait," Hazel said. "What if you hook Owen up to one of these Memory Loungers? Surely, he must have a memory of being implanted with the tracker _somewhere_ in his head."

Before Owen could protest, Amala did. "Impossible. Any memories of his synth life would be impossible to find."

Owen and Hazel shared a look. His synth memories were doing a _really_ good job of breaking to the surface, but Amala didn't know that.

Owen finally cursed, rubbed his face, and said, "Not exactly."

It took a few minutes to explain the entirety of Owen's situation to Amala, but once they were finished, Hazel could see the fire of curiosity in the scientist's eyes.

"I might be able to do it," she said, seemingly talking to herself. "If I can bypass the secondary memories…"

"What's the risk?" Hazel asked. There always was one, where memories were involved. The story of her father diving into the assassin Kellogg's mind gave her nightmares as a child, and sometimes it still did. She didn't want something like that to happen to Owen, regardless of her complicated feelings regarding him.

Er. Not that she _had_ any, of course…

Amala thought about that for a moment, then shook her head. "For a minimal procedure like this, the risk should be nominal."

Hazel looked at Owen, who was viewing the memory lounger apprehensively. Clearly, he was not a fan.

"Owen," she said, drawing his attention to her despite the fact that she knew very well he was still a shirtless distraction to her. He sent her a nervous smile, and she nodded levelly at him. "It will fine. I'll be right here the whole time."

He took a breath and nodded. Then, to Amala: "Do it."

 **x x x**

Being hooked up to a memory lounger was a very strange experience. While the thing he was lying in was very comfortable, with all of its cushions, the experience itself was not. He couldn't help thinking about what would happen if something went wrong. Would it fry his brain? Would he forget the life he had now?

"Are you ready?" Amala asked him.

Owen wanted to say _no_ , but instead he nodded. As Amala turned back to her computer, Hazel approached him.

"You'll be fine," she said.

"How do you know?" he asked.

Hazel sent him a small smile that he rather liked on her face. "Plenty of other synths have been in these things without too much consequence, remember?"

"Yeah, but none of them have two different lives in their heads," Owen pointed out.

Hazel sighed. "Just…trust _me,_ all right? I trust Doc Amala, and if anything goes wrong I'll make her pull you out of there right away, okay?"

Owen thought about that for a second. Trust Hazel. He could do that—after everything that had happened, she had earned his trust. And his heart. In fact, she was one of the few people (if not the _only_ person) he trusted implicitly. He nodded at her. She patted his knee comfortingly before backing up and looking at Amala.

"Is it ready?"

"Yes." Amala turned in her spinning office chair to look at Owen. "This will be completely painless. Just sit back, relax, and let your brain do all the work."

Owen wasn't quite sure how to do that, but he agreed. He sat back in the memory lounger, entwining his fingers together in his lap. He could do this. It was just a memory, right?

He almost lost his nerve as the glass top started to descend, but then he looked at Hazel, and relaxed. Everything would be fine. All he had to do was—

That screen. It read PLEASE STAND BY in big letters, and Owen knew he'd seen it before. In another life, it seemed.

The next thing he knew, he was in a memory.

" _Just sit still, Q1, and this will all be over soon," the scientist promised._

 _Q1 scoffed. The SRB scientists always made promises like that, and they were almost never true. Not that it mattered. Q1 was a trained Institute synth; he could handle anything the Commonwealth could throw at him, which meant he was more than capable of standing up to a simple shot._

 _So he rolled up his sleeve and stared at a Courser across the room. As far as he knew, the Coursers had never gotten tracker shots. Why must he?_

Because you have a mission from Father _, he reminded himself. Nothing was more important._

 _Q1 didn't even wince as the SRB scientist injected the tracker into his left bicep. He was well trained to deal with pain._

" _That's it!" the scientist said. "You're all done."_

 _Q1-91 stood. "I have a mission to perform. Please remove yourself from my path."_

" _Er…right."_

Owen woke from the memory with a gasp, feeling as if he were going to vomit. His body was trembling all over, and the moment the glass pod lifted, he rolled out of the memory lounger and onto the ground. His costume was soaked through with sweat.

"Owen?" a voice said. A moment later, hands lifted him to his feet and stabilized him by holding his arms tight. Hazel's face swam before him "Oh my God, Owen? Are you all right?"

Owen had just enough sense to shake his head _no_ , he was not all right, before Hazel grabbed his hand and led him to the couch—something that, under normal circumstances, would have made his heart leap for joy. He was too out of it to notice. He barely even noticed the difference between standing and sitting on the cushioned couch.

"It was like I was really there." It took him a second to realize that he was the one speaking. "I could…I could _feel_ what it was like…to be a synth, a _programmed_ synth…"

"Hey," Hazel said, her voice soft but drenched in concern, "look at me. When my father did this, he said it helped to focus on someone else."

So Owen did focus on her. He focused on the way she smelled; on how the dim lighting of the Memory's Den basement made her eyes shine all the brighter. On how she was somehow turning his thoughts from the horror of the Institute to her, as if by magic. Once he had his senses back, he focused most of all on how she was still holding his hand. _Tightly_ , as if she were in danger of being blown away by the wind.

He couldn't help it. He grinned. _Hazel Lewis,_ daughter of the famous Sole Survivor, was holding his hand, and didn't seem to realize that she was still doing it. Oh, she would slap him if she knew what he was thinking, but he didn't care.

Unfortunately, as soon as he grinned, she seemed to realize what she was doing. Hazel let go of his hand quickly and scooted away from him on the couch.

"Are you all right?" Amala asked.

Hazel and Owen both jumped. Owen, for one, had forgotten that someone else was in the room. He grinned again, more sheepishly.

"I'm better, now," he said. "Did you see where the tracker was?"

Amala nodded. "Your arm. Now, if you will please remove your shirt again, I will remove the tracker and we can destroy it."

For a moment, Owen thought he imagined it, but then he nearly fell off the couch as he realized what it was. Hazel had made a small strangled sound in the back of her throat, and he almost didn't notice it.

But he did, and he hid his grin as he started to unbutton his shirt.

He wasn't sure what was happening to his friend. All he knew was that he really, really liked it.

 **yah so reviews are really helpful guys**


	22. Chapter 22

"Is it done yet?" Owen asked, his eyes closed.

Hazel resisted the urge to scoff. Amala had been done cutting the tracker out of his skin for five minutes. Now she was stitching up the cut she'd made—only, Owen couldn't feel any of that, because he'd been inoculated with Med-X beforehand.

Hazel looked away from him, toward the ceiling, as she felt her eyes start to wander again. If she didn't get a handle on this elementary attraction she felt for him, the Commonwealth was doomed.

Only, it didn't really feel like just simple attraction. Not anymore. Hazel wasn't usually the type to brood on her feelings, but this was important, for the simple fact that it could get both of them killed. On the one hand, it was a good thing—she seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to him, and was aware of where he was at almost all times. That would be good in a fight. What _wasn't_ beneficial was the way her heartbeat seemed to elevate when he was nearby (which she wasn't sure how to explain away) or how her palms seemed to sweat when he accidentally stepped too close to her (which happened fairly often; he didn't seem to be aware of what he was doing or the effect it had on her). _That_ could get not only her, but Owen, her father, and anyone else in harm's way killed.

…and her mind was wandering, now. By the Wall.

Still, it was better than staring at him when he was shirtless. Somehow she knew that if he caught her doing that, she would never hear the end of it.

"All done," Amala said. She glanced at Hazel—who was still staring pointedly at the ceiling—and chuckled. "You can put your shirt back on now."

Hazel quickly busied herself with cleaning a mud-smudge off of Deliverer's barrel so that when he opened his eyes, he wouldn't see her so obviously avoiding looking at him. Good Lord, this was going to be more difficult than she thought.

"Thanks, doc," Owen said, grabbing an undershirt from his bag and pulling it on.

"And you'll keep our visit here secret, right?" Hazel asked, holstering her pistol again. She hesitated before she added the next part. "Even from the Railroad?"

Amala frowned at her. "Of course. But shouldn't the Railroad—"

"It's a top secret mission," Owen said, not even blinking as he delivered the lie. Hazel must have been rubbing off on him more than she thought. She felt a flash of pride. "Need-to-know."

"Ah," the doctor replied. "All right, then. Do either of you need anything else before you leave?"

Hazel started to shake her head, but she could see that Owen was thinking of something, in the middle of pulling the green woolen beanie over his head.

"Would you be able to pull one more memory for us?" he asked. "I'm not sure where or when this memory would be, but it could help us find something very important."

Hazel opened her mouth to protest, but Amala was already speaking.

"I suppose I could," she said carefully. "But if I don't know what I'm looking for, I'd have to do some digging around in your memories. And I'm not entirely sure if your previous, synth personality won't come back."

Owen's jaw was clenched as he looked at the memory lounger, but he nodded.

"Okay, now wait a minute!" Hazel said, standing from the couch. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Owen, you were a mess after you went into that thing!"

He frowned at her. "Hazel, the Gunners are going to keep killing innocent people unless we can find this place first and shut them down."

For a moment, all she was able to do was gape at him with a little bit of awe. It was very clear that Owen _hated_ the memory loungers, and when he had come out he was a shaking, nervous wreck. Add the fact that his previous, Institute-obsessed self might retake his body—and Owen _knew_ that, and accepted the risk—and it would have been enough to make Hazel turn tail and run. But Owen was willing to risk it, not just for revenge, but to help others.

By the Wall, she didn't deserve to be his friend. He was a _much_ better person than she was. But for once, her motivation for directing him away from the truth was driven not only out of fear that he would know it—but that he would be hurt.

"Owen, you can't!" Hazel exclaimed. "You might—your memories, they—"

But he was already shaking his head at her. "It's a risk we have to take, Hazel."

She swallowed. There was no way around it. She would have to tell him the truth. First, she looked for Doctor Amari, but the scientist seemed to have left the room, giving them a moment. Strange.

Hazel stepped toward Owen, close enough to grab his arm tightly. She needed him to know the gravity of her words. He looked down at her with something strange in his eyes, but she couldn't focus on that.

"Owen," she said. "Q1-91 was…" How was she supposed to break this gently? "…not the nicest person."

He cocked his head at her. "What do you mean?"

 _He was a murderer,_ Hazel wanted to say. But she knew that wouldn't go over well.

"Owen," she said again. "He was—"

 _BOOM!_

Something overhead exploded. Why did everything have to explode at the most inopportune of times? Hazel and Owen shared a look before they grabbed their bags and their guns in case they needed to escape quickly, then turned and dashed up the stairs.

The explosion itself had not come from the Memory Den. In fact, the explosion had come from just outside it, near the Third Rail. Hazel had to stop Owen to remind him to put on his disguise (even though they were both wearing their normal clothes now) before they stepped out the door.

The object that had exploded was not a bomb, or a grenade. It was a simple barrel of alcohol, one that was halfway in, halfway out of the Third Rail. At first, Hazel frowned, stepping out further to investigate. If she squinted at the barrel close enough, she could see something peculiar on the wood, even with her thick sunglasses.

"Do you see that?" Owen asked, stepping up closely behind her, his voice low.

Hazel swallowed, cursed his sudden proximity in her mind, and nodded. "That's an energy burn. Somebody shot that barrel on purpose. Those idiots hauling the barrel probably won't notice."

"Why would somebody shoot a barrel of alcohol?" he asked, and she looked behind her to find his brow furrowed in confusion. "It didn't injure anyone, so what was the point?"

Hazel paused, spotting something over his shoulder. It almost looked like a face—one that she recognized from a long time ago.

"Follow me, Nerd," she said, striding off toward the familiar face.

Now, Hazel was not normally in the business of walking into an abandoned alley, especially one smack dab in the middle of Goodneighbor, the shadiest place in the Commonwealth. But if what she _think_ she saw was correct, it could explain why a barrel of alcohol suddenly exploded.

She made sure to keep her head down as they walked past the crowd gathering by the Third Rail—hoping for a fight, probably. It was a good thing, because it allowed for Hazel and Owen to pass through the crowd without being noticed.

When they reached the alley, Owen put a warm hand on her arm and pulled out his laser pistol. Hazel nodded, knowing that she should be cautious, regardless of who was in the alley. She drew her pistol as well, and together they turned the corner.

Hazel immediately froze. Of all the people she was expecting to find in Goodneighbor, these two were not what she expected.

"Really, Hazel?" MacCready asked, crossing his arms. "Are you going to shoot your godfather?"

 **Yay, I got a review! Thanks for that. Please, guys, hit me up with some more of those-always helpful, especially as the romance arch increases.**


End file.
